The US Navy is moving forward with a plan to add a numbered fleet to the Indo-Pacific as part of its efforts to counter China in the region. The plan would resurrect the First Fleet, which was in operation from 1945 to 1973.
The “administrative requirements” to recommission the First Fleet “are in the final stages of coordination,” Capt. Jereal Dorsey, a spokesman for Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite, told Stars and Stripes. Dorsey said Braithwaite is working with other US military chiefs to ensure the Navy maintains “maritime dominance in an era of great power competition.”
Braithwaite first mentioned the idea during a speech on November 17th. He said the US wants to place a new fleet in the “crossroads between the Indian and the Pacific Oceans” to “have an Indo-Pacom footprint.”
The US Navy frequently sails warships into the South China Sea to challenge Beijing’s claims to the waters. The ships deployed to make these provocative maneuvers usually come from the Seventh Fleet, which is based in Japan. As Braithwaite commented, “We can’t just rely on the Seventh Fleet in Japan.”
Braithwaite floated Singapore as a possible location to base the new fleet. Some analysts believe housing a new permanent US base in Singapore is unlikely, as the Southeast Asian country would not want to appear to take a side in the growing US-China rivalry. Another possible home for the new fleet is Western Australia.
A former Australian defense official told Stars and Stripes that housing the new fleet in Western Australia was the “obvious” choice. “The obvious location for the fleet’s home port is Cockburn Sound in Perth alongside the Australian naval base HMAS Stirling,” said Ross Babbage, a former Australian assistant defense secretary.
Sure, and why not? We’re rolling in dough, right.
Yep. Stock market is up and upper class USers are rolling in dough.
Plus we all know aircraft carriers are easy to defend against inexpensive drone swarms parked on the bottom by fishermen who drop them into place from their nets.
Infrastructure or new navy fleet? Lets put it to a vote.
Corporations are persons. And Money speaks. Money speaks convincingly to our elected and unelected public servants. They cannot be denied their freedom of speech! And they vote for navy!
But then — Artificial Intelligence has a say in the matter as well. While we speak, do we know anything about Poseidon, Russian nuclear drone/probe submarine announced back in 2018?Most likely, they are already prowling ocean bottoms, very likely powered by Russian nuclear mini- reactor, and fitted with Chinese AI. Now, AI has a rather precise logic about what constitutes a threat to their navies and merchant fleets. Here we are — offense vs defense, money poured into old ocean controlling fleets, vs. technology designed to destroy them.
A weird moment in military history. A self confident power focused on offense, and conservative continental powers focused on defense —and that means defense against forward placed assets. And most of them are naval. And they can produce more deep water, undetectable drones, then we can ships.
There is no clamoring for defending our land. It is assumed that nobody can produce technology that could harm us.
This is not just our leaders’ folly — populace at large just assumes that we are without weakness and thus can strut across the globe with impunity. How smart is that?
Why “counter China”??? What about realising that China is a rising power and wants peace and cooperation (most other nations agree) and stop the warmongering and moaning.?