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Singapore welcomes US aircraft carrier

THE US and Singapore have sealed a strategically significant naval partnership with the first visit of "super carrier" USS Kitty Hawk to the new Changi naval station.

The Changi base's deep-draft pier, purpose-built by the Singaporeans for American use, gives the US navy a carrier-berthing facility in Southeast Asia for the first time in almost a decade.

This improves the capability and flexibility of the US seventh and third fleets' battle groups operating in the western Pacific, Indian Ocean and Arabian Gulf.

It also gives the US a base capacity -- although the Americans and Singaporeans are careful not to describe it that way -- at the mouth of the Malacca Strait, one of the world's busiest and most strategic sea lanes.

US chief of naval operations Admiral Vernon Clark and Singapore navy chief Rear-Admiral Lui Tuck Yew Mar 23 formalised the partnership at Changi.

Earlier Rear-Admiral Mark Edwards, chief of the US navy's Singapore-based western Pacific logistics group, said the Changi facility would significantly speed the resupply and mission times of large US warships. "This is very important as our deployment schedules are ever-changing."

The Americans have not had the use of a dedicated carrier-berthing port in the region since The Philippines curtailed the Subic Bay and Clark Field leases in 1992.

The only other South-East Asian facility capable of handling aircraft carriers, Malaysia's Port Klang, is occasionally visited by US vessels, but there is no base agreement between the two countries.

Singapore's offer to build a deepwater pier for US use was prompted by fears the loss of Subic would reduce the US's commitment to "forward deployment" in the western Pacific.

Following the Philippines closures, the Americans relocated the western Pacific logistics group to Singapore to resupply naval vessels, but that still left the US navy without a carrier berth in the middle of its biggest maritime theatre.

The seventh fleet, forward deployed from Yokosuka in Japan, is responsible for naval security in the Pacific west of Hawaii and through the Indian Ocean to East Africa.

The San Diego-based third fleet is mainly responsible for the eastern Pacific, but deploys carrier groups on six-month tours to the Arabian Gulf under command of the fifth fleet. Changi naval station, the Republic of Singapore navy's new operational, training and maintenance base, will become fully operational in 2003.