A United States naval strike group, led by an aircraft carrier and three destroyers, made port calls in three countries bordering the contested region of the South China Sea last week, as shown in a new Newsweek map.
USS Abraham Lincoln, one of 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in service with the U.S. Navy, reached Port Klang on Malaysia's west coast for a scheduled visit on Saturday. The port faces the Strait of Malacca, which connects the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.
Meanwhile, three destroyer escorts assigned to the carrier strike group led by the Abraham Lincoln visited two other countries in the region. USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. conducted a port call to Singapore while USS Spruance and USS Michael Murphy arrived in Thailand.
The U.S. Navy said the carrier strike group demonstrated its inherent flexibility by visiting three countries in the region concurrently. The rest of the group, destroyers USS O'Kane and USS Stockdale, remain stationed in the Middle East for maritime security operations.
The Pentagon ordered the Abraham Lincoln's group to depart the Middle East following a surge deployment amid tensions between Israel and Iran. It was spotted sailing into the northern end of the Strait of Malacca from the Indian Ocean on Thursday.
The carrier strike group has been operating in the Middle East since late August, when the U.S. military retasked it from a scheduled deployment in the Western Pacific Ocean and the Eastern Indian Ocean, which are within the U.S. Seventh Fleet's area of operations.
The visit made by the Abraham Lincoln marks the return of an American "flattop" to the South China Sea, where tensions remain high over islands, reefs, and maritime zones claimed by China, the Philippines and Malaysia, as well as other nations.
According to photos published by the U.S. Navy, the previous aircraft carrier operating in the South China Sea was USS Theodore Roosevelt on September 20. It returned to its base in California on October 15.
The Abraham Lincoln became the first U.S. "flattop" to pay a visit to Malaysia since 2012. This visit "highlights our shared commitment to regional stability and Malaysian sovereignty," said Edgard D. Kagan, the U.S. Ambassador to the Southeast Asian nation.
The Abraham Lincoln's sister ship, USS George Washington, returned to its home port at Yokosuka naval base in Japan on Friday, marking the end of the U.S. "carrier gap" in the Western Pacific Ocean since the summer.
In late October, the Chinese navy flexed its muscles in the South China Sea by conducting its first dual aircraft carrier operation, at a time that no American "flattops" were available for tasking in the wider Western Pacific Ocean, according to Newsweek's weekly update.
Apart from the Abraham Lincoln and the George Washington, there is another U.S. aircraft carrier transiting toward the Western Pacific Ocean: USS Carl Vinson. It left its home port of San Diego, California, on November 18 for a Pacific Ocean deployment.
English (US) ·