US Navy to revive old fleet as deterrent against Beijing

 

The Indian destroyer Ranvijay is refuelled by tanker INS Deepak on Wednesday during the Malabar naval exercise in the Arabian Sea. Picture: Indian Navy via AFP

• By MICHAEL EVANS
• THE TIMES
• 6:31PM NOVEMBER 19, 2020

The Pentagon is planning to re-establish the US navy’s 1st Fleet, which was deactivated nearly 50 years ago, to bolster deterrence against Beijing.

If the plans are approved it would be the second fleet command to be revived in the past two years, a recognition of the growing maritime threat posed by both China and Russia.

The 2nd Fleet, responsible for the defence of the US east coast and the North Atlantic, was reactivated in August 2018 and became fully operational last December 31.

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The revival of the 1st Fleet, which will cover the Indian Ocean and nearby areas of the Pacific, came as the US joined up with Australian, Indian and Japanese navies in the northern Arabian Sea. The exercise is the second phase of a combined war game codenamed Malabar to counter China’s perceived military aggression in the region. Two carrier strike groups are involved, led by the US navy’s 100,000-tonne USS Nimitz and the Indian navy’s INS Vikramaditya, India’s sole carrier, which was bought from Russia in 2013. It can carry 30 aircraft.

The proposal for a new 1st Fleet command was announced by US Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite. The move is believed to be necessary to relieve the pressure on the 7th Fleet, which has its own forward-based aircraft carrier, USS Ronald Reagan, stationed at Yokosuka in Japan. The original 1st Fleet was formed in 1947 and covered the western Pacific. It was deactivated in 1973.

Mr Braithwaite admitted he had yet to win approval from Acting Defence Secretary Christopher Miller, who was appointed by Donald Trump after he sacked Mark Esper last week. Mr Esper had supported the navy proposal.

The headquarters of the 1st Fleet is likely to be in Singapore, although consideration is being given to make it more expeditionary and other bases, such as the one on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, could provide an additional command HQ.

The 7th Fleet at Yokosuka, comprising up to 80 ships and submarines and 140 aircraft, has the biggest area of responsibility of all the US fleets. It covers more than 77 million square kilometres of the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific, from the international date line that passes through the mid-Pacific to the India/Pakistan border and from the Kuril Islands, north of Japan, to Antarctica.

Mr Braithwaite said a new 1st Fleet would make it possible for such a burden to be shared between two fleet commanders, at a time when the Chinese had “shown their aggressiveness around the globe”. Speaking at the annual symposium of the US naval submarine league, he said: “Not since the War of 1812 (between the US and Britain) has the US and our sovereignty been under the kind of pressures that we see today. We can’t just rely on the 7th Fleet in Japan. We have to look to our other allies and partners, like Singapore, like India, and put a numbered fleet where it would be extremely relevant if, God forbid, we were ever to get into any kind of dust-up.”

Separately, the US navy intercepted a dummy intercontinental ballistic missile from a destroyer in the Pacific for the first time, ­potentially blunting the threat posed to the US by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.

The Times