An Indonesian army paratrooper prepares to fire an M240B machine gun during weapons training with U.S. paratroopers as part of exercise Garuda Shield 2013 at 1st Kostrad headquarters in West Java, Indonesia, June 14, 2013. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeodBy: Brant
The United States said it would soon send a missile defense system to Guam to defend it from North Korea, as the U.S. military adjusts to what Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called a "real and clear danger" from Pyongyang.
Hours later, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said North Korea had moved what appeared to be a mid-range Musudan missile to its east coast. It was not clear if the North planned to fire the rocket or was just putting it on display as a show of force, one South Korean government source was quoted as saying.
Department of Defense Announces Missile Defense Deployment
The Department of Defense will deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system to Guam in the coming weeks as a precautionary move to strengthen our regional defense posture against the North Korean regional ballistic missile threat.
The THAAD system is a land-based missile defense system that includes a truck-mounted launcher, a complement of interceptor missiles, an AN/TPY-2 tracking radar, and an integrated fire control system. This deployment will strengthen defense capabilities for American citizens in the U.S. Territory of Guam and U.S. forces stationed there.
The United States continues to urge the North Korean leadership to cease provocative threats and choose the path of peace by complying with its international obligations. The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and stands ready to defend U.S. territory, our allies, and our national interests.
China's central military authority has approved to form and deploy a military garrison in the newly established city of Sansha.
Sources with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Guangzhou Military Command said Friday that the Central Military Commission (CMC) had authorized it to form a garrison command in the city.
The garrison command will be a division-level command under the PLA's Hainan provincial sub-command, responsible for managing the city's national defense mobilization, military reserves and carrying out military operations.
The PLA's Sansha Garrison Command will be under the dual leadership of the Hainan provincial sub-command and the city's civilian leaders.
In a gesture of friendship and goodwill toward an obscure former ally, warships from New Zealand have been granted special, private berthing privileges for a major naval exercise now underway in Hawaii. And wouldn’t you know it: they’re complaining. It seems that while ships from a dozen friendly countries are berthed at crowded, attack-prone Pearl Harbor, two New Zealand warships have been assigned exclusive berthing spots at Honolulu’s lovely civilian harbor, several miles away. All by themselves.
This is the first time that New Zealand forces have been invited to take part in the biennial RIMPAC exercises since New Zealand banned U.S. Navy ships from making port calls there in the 1980s. U.S. warships are still not welcome. Sensitive Kiwis detect a deliberate snub in the separate berthing arrangements in Hawaii.
“Petty, petulant and pathetic,” says the New Zealand Herald. “What other conclusion is it possible to draw from the absurd, vindictive and ultimately short-sighted refusal by the United States to allow two New Zealand naval vessels to berth at the Pearl Harbor military base?”
A quarter of poll respondents said New Zealand should pull out of the exercise because of the “petty snub.”
Well, sure, but it could be worse. The Kiwis’ temporary home is at the foot of historic Aloha Tower, a short walk from shopping, restaurants, bars and the kind of nighttime, personal-service entertainment long favored by seagoing personnel. The beaches and discos of Waikiki are a quick bus ride away.
As the United States moves to bolster its military position in Asia, it faces severe budget cuts from Congress, an increasingly powerful rival in China and a hornet's nest of regional political sensitivities.
The shift in U.S. policy puts Asia and the Pacific front-and-center of its strategic priorities and is driven by concerns that China has raced ahead in the world's most economically dynamic region while the U.S. was tied up fighting its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in a region rife with disputes and increasingly beholden to China's economic engine, the Pentagon is being careful its "pivot to the Pacific" doesn't create too many waves.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is spearheading the U.S. effort to sell the new strategy in Asia, told regional defense leaders at a major security conference in Singapore that it is only natural for the Asia-Pacific to be in the spotlight because it is home to some of the world's biggest populations and militaries.
Before moving on to Vietnam and India, Panetta said Washington will "of necessity" rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region and vowed 60 percent of the Navy's fleet will be deployed to the Pacific by 2020. He said the U.S. presence will be more agile, flexible and high-tech. Troops may increase overall, but no major influx is expected.
A super-stealthy warship that could underpin the U.S. navy's China strategy will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets with electromagnetic "railguns" right out of a sci-fi movie.Some of the particulars mentioned in the article are pretty impressive.
But at more than $3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One outspoken admiral in China has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.
With the first of the new ships set to be delivered in 2014, the stealth destroyer is being heavily promoted by the Pentagon as the most advanced destroyer in history — a silver bullet of stealth. It has been called a perfect fit for what Washington now considers the most strategically important region in the world — Asia and the Pacific.
The DDG-1000 and other stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt class feature a wave-piercing hull that leaves almost no wake, electric drive propulsion and advanced sonar and missiles. They are longer and heavier than existing destroyers — but will have half the crew because of automated systems and appear to be little more than a small fishing boat on enemy radar.
Down the road, the ship is to be equipped with an electromagnetic railgun, which uses a magnetic field and electric current to fire a projectile at several times the speed of sound.
Singapore said it was studying a proposal from Canada to set up a logistics facility in the city-state for disaster relief efforts, reportedly to support a US military shift to Asia.
Canadian Defence Minister Peter Gordon MacKay said in an interview with The Canadian Press that the proposal was part of Ottawa's efforts to back up the US military "pivot" towards the Asia-Pacific region, which has irked China.
"The Canadians have proposed setting up a logistics support hub in Singapore for their regional humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts," a spokesman for the Singapore foreign ministry told AFP on Sunday.
The Philippine military on Thursday accused China of sending more ships to a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, describing the move as an insult that would further inflame tensions.
Four Chinese surveillance ships and 10 fishing boats have anchored off the disputed Scarborough Shoal, with the fishermen taking giant clams and corals that are protected under Philippine law, a regional military spokesman said.
It is the largest number of Chinese vessels seen at the shoal since the two countries began a sovereignty standoff there almost a month ago, according to Major Loel Egos, whose northern command covers the area.
"They are just worsening the insult, bringing in all these fishing boats and all we can do is resort to diplomacy," Egos told AFP.
"They really want to test what a little country like the Philippines can do against a giant."
Egos said the Philippines, which has one of the weakest militaries in the region, has just two coast guard ships and a fisheries bureau vessel at the shoal that are unable to do anything about the Chinese fishing.
At least five people have been killed in clashes between Democratic Republic of Congo's army and soldiers loyal to a renegade general wanted by the International Criminal court for war crimes, U.N. and military sources said on Monday.
The fighting in the Masisi region of North Kivu began late on Sunday and forced thousands of residents to flee their homes, some of them into neighbouring Rwanda, said aid groups.
General Bosco Ntaganda fought the government as a rebel before he was integrated into the army alongside other insurgents as part of a 2009 peace deal.
But clashes erupted again after President Joseph Kabila announced in mid April that he would try to arrest Ntaganda, a divise figure who has been at the heart of the region's instability, "because the whole country wants peace".
Mali's junta said Tuesday the group still controls the state broadcaster, the airport and a military base after a countercoup attempt.
Soldiers loyal to coup leader Capt. Amadou Sanogo appeared on state television early Tuesday and said the important installations remained in their hands after Monday's attempt.
But heavy gunfire could still be heard in Bamako Tuesday, suggesting that the junta did not yet have total control over the capital.
Anti-junta forces on Monday took over the country's state broadcaster and attacked the airport and the junta's main military base.
A Pacific delegation, including foreign ministers from Australia and New Zealand, on Tuesday reported Fiji's military regime was making "positive progress" towards holding elections in 2014.
Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr and his New Zealand counterpart Murray McCully, two of the harshest critics of Fiji's military dictatorship, travelled to Suva as part of a Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) delegation.
The regime, which seized power in a 2006 coup, reneged on a promise to hold elections in 2009 but the PIF group said there were signs it intended to honour its promise to hold a ballot in 2014.
"Ministers said they were encouraged by the steps taken by Fiji on election planning, as well as by information provided about Fiji's intentions," they said in a statement.
"These gave Ministers a sense that Fiji was a country in transition, moving to put in place processes required for elections."
Hundreds of American and Philippine troops waded ashore on Wednesday in a mock assault to retake a small island in energy-rich waters disputed with China, a drill Beijing had said would raise the risk of armed conflict.
The exercises, part of annual U.S.-Philippine war games on the western island of Palawan, coincide with another standoff between Chinese and Philippine vessels near Scarborough Shoal in a different part of the South China Sea.
China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan across the South China Sea, each searching for gas and oil while building up their navies and military alliances.
China said last week the drill would raise the risk of confrontation. On Wednesday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said China was committed to dialogue and diplomacy to resolve the dispute.
"We are certainly worried about the South China Sea issue," Cui told a news briefing in Beijing, saying "some people tried to mix two unrelated things, territorial sovereignty and freedom of navigation".
Joint military exercises between the US and the Philippines are getting under way in the South China Sea, even as Manila remained locked in a stand-off with Beijing over a disputed shoal.
The annual exercises, called Balikatan, are due to run until 27 April.
This year they are taking place off Palawan, near parts of the South China Sea both Manila and Beijing claim.
Meanwhile Philippine and Chinese vessels remain at the Scarborough Shoal, a week after the deadlock began.
The Philippines said its warship found eight Chinese fishing vessels at the shoal - which both sides claim - when it was patrolling the area on 8 April.
China insists that its rights in areas like the disputed Spratly Islands are paramount, despite rival claims from the Philippines, Vietnam and other countries too.
The government in Manila is taking steps to modernise its small naval and air forces. But it is looking to Washington to help balance China's growing power.
Two decades after US forces were evicted from their biggest base in the Pacific, there has been talk of a renewed US military presence. The fact that the joint exercises are being held on the island of Palawan - the closest Philippines territory to the Spratlys - will doubtless irritate China.
The U.S. Congress has approved the transfer of a second Coast Guard ship to the Philippines, an official said Friday as Washington shifts its military ties with the Southeast Asian nation that has been engaged in a territorial spat with China.
In the past, U.S. cooperation with the Philippines has focused mostly on counterterrorism, but it has recently expanded to building up the country's moribund navy.
Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro told reporters Friday that he will consider a Philippine request to have the warship turned over with as much military equipment as possible.
"I'm pleased that the congressional notification period for a second Coast Guard cutter expired this week, so that means Congress has now approved the transfer ... to the Philippines, which will further help Philippine security needs," he said after talks with Filipino defense officials in Manila.
The ship — the second such delivery since last May under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty — is just one of many defense projects that the U.S. is discussing with the Philippines. That comes in addition to having American ships regularly visit and refuel in Philippine ports, rotating U.S. troops in the southern Philippines where al-Qaida-linked Muslim militants are active and holding large-scale joint military exercises.
China has said that it views with concern the increased U.S. military engagement with the Philippines and balked at what it sees as Washington's interference in the South China Sea dispute. The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan all have conflicting territorial claims over potentially gas and oil rich islands with the Asian superpower.
America's strengthened military pact with Australia is a figment of "Cold War thinking" that will destabilize the Asia-Pacific region, China's Defense Ministry said Wednesday, in Beijing's strongest criticism yet of a move widely seen as intended to counter China's rising assertiveness.
Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng's comments at a monthly news conference came short of the scathing attacks on the agreement from China's nationalist press and outspoken academics.
However, they appeared to reflect a harder tone from the armed forces, whose expanding budget and reach have rattled many of China's neighbors and prompted them to seek strengthened alliances with the region's dominant military power, America.
"Military alliances were created by history. We think that all moves to strengthen and expand military alliances are a product of Cold War thinking that run counter to the era's trend of peace, development and cooperation," Geng said.
The agreement, announced during a November visit by President Barack Obama to Australia, will send military aircraft and up to 2,500 Marines to northern Australia for a training hub to help allies and protect American interests across Asia.
The U.S. Navy said it would station several new coastal combat ships in Singapore and perhaps in the Philippines in coming years, moves likely to fuel China's fears of being encircled and pressured in the South China Sea dispute.
Regional defense analysts said the ships were small, but agreed the symbolism of the moves, which come after Washington announced it was increasing its engagement in Asia, would upset Beijing.
Last month the United States and Australia announced plans to deepen the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, with 2,500 U.S. Marines operating out of a de facto base in Darwin in northern Australia.
In coming years, the U.S. Navy will increasingly focus on the strategic "maritime crossroads" of the Asia-Pacific region, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert wrote in the December issue of Proceedings, published by the U.S. Naval Institute.
He said the navy planned to "station several of our newest littoral combat ships at Singapore's naval facility," in addition to the plans announced by President Barack Obama for marines to be based in Darwin from next year.
A battle-scarred general took leadership of the underfunded Philippine military Monday, vowing to bolster his country's external defense so it could adequately respond to "untoward incidents" amid territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
The 125,000-member Philippine military, one of Asia's weakest, has been struggling to modernize its dilapidated air force and navy and train its forces due to a lack of funds. President Benigno Aquino III recently said he would seek modern fighter jets from longtime ally Washington when he visits next year.
Army Lt. Gen. Jessie Dellosa, who took over the military leadership in austere ceremonies led by Aquino on Monday, said recent developments in the South China Sea — obviously referring to renewed territorial spats in the potentially oil-rich region — have made upgrading external defenses inevitable for the Philippines.
"It compels us to look into our maritime security deeply," Dellosa said in his speech. "Development of navy and air force bases and facilities to efficiently respond to untoward incidents is something we can no longer ignore."
Dellosa formerly was an army combat officer and was wounded twice while battling Muslim guerrillas and al-Qaida-linked militants in the southern Philippines. He also led an elite unit that helped Aquino's mother, the late pro-democracy Philippine leader Corazon Aquino, subdue coup attempts.
The United States will provide a second warship to the ill-equipped Philippine military as it confronts China in increasingly tense territorial disputes in the South China Sea, a Philippine official said Thursday.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton assured Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin during talks in Manila on Wednesday that Washington would give its longtime ally a second Coast Guard cutter virtually for free some time next year.
The first second-hand cutter from the U.S. Coast Guard sailed into Manila in August and became the most modern vessel in the dilapidated Philippine fleet. Clinton assured the Philippine military of intensified U.S. assistance Wednesday when the allies marked the 60th anniversary of the signing of their Mutual Defense Treaty aboard a U.S. naval destroyer in Manila.
The first U.S. ship, which has been renamed the BRP Gregorio del Pilar, would be deployed to secure Philippine territorial waters in the South China Sea as early as this month, the military said.
Underwater traffic cops may soon be needed to direct submarine traffic in the Pacific as Pacific Rim nations dramatically increase their submarine fleets.China and South Korea are expanding their submarine fleets as the U.S. Navy shrinks its own. The conservative Heritage Foundation in a report last Tuesday said that by 2025 the number of U.S. submarines in the Pacific Ocean will fall from 30 to 27 while China will have 78 submarines and South Korea 26.By: Shelldrake
Mackenzie Eaglen and Jon Rodeback, who prepared the report titled "Submarine Arms Race in the Pacific" among a flurry of such papers issuing from the think tank, said the military strength of the U.S. and Russia is waning while China and South Korea's capabilities are rising and India and Australia also aspire to bolster their naval capabilities. In an attempt to dominate in the Pacific, these countries are increasing the numbers of diesel-electric attack, nuclear-powered attack, guided-missile and ballistic missile submarines.
China's growth is especially noteworthy. The Financial Times says that China's naval forces are already world class with 255,000 sailors, 26 destroyers, 49 frigates and 58 amphibious landing vessels. Since 1995, China has focused on submarine construction and built 31 new models by 2005. China presently has 60 submarines including six nuclear and 50 diesel-powered ones.
The South Korean Navy has also bolstered its submarine fleet. Since the 1,300-ton submarine Jangbogo was commissioned in 1993, a total of 12 submarines are in use, including the 1,800-ton Ahn Jung Geun commissioned last year. From 2012 to 2018, South Korea plans to manufacture six 1,800-ton submarines and nine 3,000-ton submarines to become Asia's second largest power after China in terms of the number of submarines.
Australia and India feel they have no choice but to bolster their own naval warfare capabilities. Australia plans to boost the number of its submarines from six to 12 and India from 17 to 24. Meanwhile, Russia is struggling to just maintain its existing level of military capability. Pacifist Japan and North Korea with its fleet of rusting vessels are unlikely to flex much naval muscle in the region.
It’s been touted as a rare U.S. military success against Islamic extremists in the so-called global war on terror.
Since early 2002, a small number of U.S. troops, mostly Special Forces, have been supporting the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in their fight against terrorism in the Mindanao group of islands. The region is historically lawless, impoverished and politically removed from the national government in Manila.
Known as the U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines (JSOTF-P), they enjoyed early accomplishments that have prompted some in the U.S. military establishment to hail it as a textbook case of effective counterinsurgency tactics that could be applied to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
China said Sunday its navy will stage live-ammunition drills in the Yellow Sea this week, after it condemned U.S.-South Korean joint naval exercises in the region and vowed to respond in kind.
Beijing has said last month's U.S.-South Korea joint naval drills risked heightening tensions on the Korean peninsula and ignored China's objections to any foreign military exercises off its coast.
The Beihai Fleet of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy will conduct exercises from Wednesday to Saturday in the sea off the southeast coast of Qingdao city, where the fleet is headquartered, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the defense ministry.
The drills are routine, annual training mostly involving the shooting of shipboard artillery, Xinhua said. Calls to the ministry's offices rang unanswered Sunday.
The United States and South Korea have planned additional joint maneuvers in the Yellow Sea early next month, although no dates have been announced. Last month's drills were held in the East Sea, the waters off the Korean peninsula's east coast.
The series of joint U.S.-South Korean exercises were planned as a show of force aimed at rebuking North Korea after an international investigation found that it had torpedoed a South Korean ship in March, killing 46 sailors on board. North Korea has denied the allegation and China has not joined the international condemnation of the North.
The U.S. military opposes the use of force by countries locked in a territorial dispute in the South China Sea and will maintain its presence in the strategic region for years to come, an American commander said Wednesday.
China, meanwhile, lashed out at an American report that said Beijing's secrecy amid its military buildup increased the potential for conflict.
The comments by Adm. Robert Willard, the head of the U.S. Pacific Command, follow remarks last month by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that outraged China. Clinton told a conference of Southeast and East Asian ministers that the U.S. had a "national interest" in seeing the territorial disputes resolved through a "collaborative diplomatic process by all claimants."
China claims sovereignty over the entire South China Sea, which is strewn with disputed groups of islands, including the Spratly archipelago — also claimed in whole or in part by Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines.
Willard said that Washington does not take sides in the disputes but added it will oppose any use "of force or any forms of coercion to stake these claims on the part of any single nation at the expense of the others."
A leading Chinese general urged closer ties with Australia's military on Monday, amid a continuing freeze on Beijing's contacts with the Pentagon.
Gen. Liao Xilong pledged Monday to "beef up military exchanges" with Australia, during a meeting in Beijing with Australian Air Vice-Marshal Margaret Staib, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The People's Liberation Army "hopes to expand its cooperation with the Australian armed forces to push bilateral military ties to a new level," said Liao, who is head of logistics for the 2.3 million-member PLA and sits on Communist Party commission that oversees the military's operations.
The outreach to a top U.S. ally in the region contrasts starkly with Beijing's approach toward Washington — continuing its demands that the U.S. cancel a $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, and take other unspecified steps to repair relations and allow military exchanges to resume.
Three decommissioned vessels were used as targets for a sinking exercise during Rim of the Pacific 2010.By: Shelldrake
Lance CPL Kevin Beebe covers the beginning of RIMPAC 2010 on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2010, is a biennial, multinational exercise designed to strengthen regional partnerships and improve multinational interoperability.By: Shelldrake
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