The US Defence Secretary Robert Gates during his recent visit to Singapore announced that the US Navy would establish a new presence in Singapore by locating ‘one or two’ of the new littoral combat ships (LCS) presently under construction in the US.

“We’ve taken a number of steps towards establishing a defence posture across the Asia-Pacific that is more geographically distributed, operationally resilient and politically sustainable,” Gates said.

The 400-foot-long, high-speed warships, optimised for shallow-water operations, would be the first US military vessels to be permanently located in South East Asia, although the Navy for many years has maintained a support facility in this region.

The US Navy operates only two LCS, designed and built by different suppliers. The USS Freedom, built by Lockheed Martin and commissioned in 2008, uses a conventional monohull design. The USS Independence, designed by General Dynamics and built by Austal USA, employs a futuristic trimaran or triple-hulled design. It entered service last year.

The Littoral Combat Ships are short-range vessels compared with the destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers that make up the bulk of the Navy’s 280-strong battle fleet. Typically, US warships on deployment in the Pacific sail from California or Japan and periodically receive supplies from supply vessels while on the move. The littoral combat ships would require far more frequent resupplying than other vessels, making forward deployment to Singapore particularly attractive for them.

This strategic move is expected to counter the Chinese move which is planning its first overseas naval base in Gwadar, western Pakistan.