Tag Archives: Yokosuka naval base

U.S. bolsters Asia ballistic missile defense as Trump-Kim summit nears

The U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG69) arrives to join Forward Deployed Naval Forces at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan May 22, 2018. REUTERS/Issei Kato

By Tim Kelly

YOKOSUKA, Japan (Reuters) – The USS Milius, one of the U.S. Navy’s most advanced guided missile destroyers, arrived in Japan on Tuesday to reinforce defenses against any ballistic missile attacks by North Korea, or anyone else in East Asia.

The warship’s arrival at Yokosuka Naval Base comes three weeks before an unprecedented meeting is supposed to take place in Singapore between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG69) arrives to join Forward Deployed Naval Forces at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan May 22, 2018. REUTERS/Issei Kato

The U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG69) arrives to join Forward Deployed Naval Forces at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan May 22, 2018. REUTERS/Issei Kato

The show of force is a reminder of the military pressure that can be brought to bear on North Korea as the United States seeks to press it to abandon its nuclear weapons and its ballistic missile program.

The deployment of the Milius to Japan was delayed by almost a year so it could undergo upgrades to its Aegis air defense system to enhance its ability to detect and target missiles.

Armed with missiles designed to shoot down warheads in space, the Milius will be part of a naval destroyer force that would be the first U.S. line of defense against any long-range ballistic missiles fired at it by North Korea.

The force, under a security treaty between Japan and the United States, would also defend Japan from attack.

“What the Milius has now is the latest and greatest upgrade for the combat system,” Commander Jennifer Pontius, the ship’s captain, said in Yokosuka after her ship docked.

“It creates increased capacity in various mission areas such as ballistic missile defense, electronic warfare, undersea warfare and air warfare.”

The Milius’s dockside welcome under a bright afternoon sky in Yokosuka, the headquarters of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, came amid uncertainty over whether the Trump-Kim meeting will go ahead.

North Korea said last week it was reconsidering the summit after calling off separate talks with South Korea in a protest over U.S.-South Korean air combat drills known as Max Thunder.

North Korea said it would walk away from dialogue if the United States insisted on it unilaterally abandoning its nuclear arsenal, which it says it needs to defend itself against U.S. aggression.

Family members of a crew hold signs, upon the arrival the U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG69), that joins Forward Deployed Naval Forces at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan May 22, 2018. REUTERS/Issei Kato

Family members of a crew hold signs, upon the arrival the U.S. guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG69), that joins Forward Deployed Naval Forces at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan May 22, 2018. REUTERS/Issei Kato

Trump has warned that failure to reach a denuclearisation agreement could lead to “decimation” of Kim’s rule.

The Milius joins two other ships in the Seventh Fleet with similar upgrades and reinforces the fleet after two other U.S. warships in the region were crippled in collisions with commercial ships last year.

With the Milius, the U.S. Navy has 13 ships based at Yokosuka, including the USS Ronald Reagan, Washington’s only forward deployed carrier.

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Robert Birsel)

An hour passed before Japan authorities were notified of Fitzgerald collision

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald, damaged by colliding with a Philippine-flagged merchant vessel, is seen at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan,

By Tim Kelly and Kaori Kaneko

TOKYO (Reuters) – Nearly an hour elapsed before a Philippine-flagged container ship reported a collision with a U.S. warship, the Japanese coastguard said on Monday, as investigations began into the accident in which seven U.S. sailors were killed.

The U.S. Navy confirmed that all seven missing sailors on the USS Fitzgerald were found dead in flooded berthing compartments after the destroyer’s collision with the container ship off Japan early on Saturday.

The Fitzgerald and a Philippine-flagged container ship collided south of Tokyo Bay early on Saturday. The cause of the collision is not known.

Multiple U.S. and Japanese investigations are under way on how a ship as large as the container could collide with the smaller warship in clear weather.

Shipping data in Thomson Reuters Eikon shows that the ACX Crystal, chartered by Japan’s Nippon Yusen KK, made a complete U-turn between 12:58 a.m. and 2:46 a.m. on June 17. (11.58 a.m. ET and 1.46 p.m. ET).

The collision happened at around 1:30 a.m. but it was not until 2:25 a.m. that the container ship informed the Japanese coastguard of the accident, said coastguard spokesman Takeshi Aikawa told Reuters.

He declined to elaborate on why the ship took nearly an hour to report the accident but said it could take ships time to notify authorities as they dealt with more urgent matters.

Right after being notified of he accident by the container vessel, the Japanese coastguard made contact with the U.S. ship and confirmed it, Aikawa said.

A significant portion of the crew on the U.S. ship was asleep when the collision occurred, tearing a gash under the warship’s waterline and flooding two crew compartments, the radio room and the auxiliary machine room.

A large dent was clearly visible in its right mid-section as the destroyer limped back to Yokosuka naval base south of Tokyo, home of the Seventh fleet, on Saturday evening.

A combination photo of the dead sailors identified by the U.S. Navy in the collision incident between U.S. Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald and Philippine-flagged merchant vessel south of Tokyo Bay on June 17, 2017. Top row (L-R) Fire Controlman 2nd Class Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan, 23, from Chula Vista, CA; Gunner's Mate Seaman Dakota Kyle Rigsby, 19, from Palmyra, VA; Sonar Technician 3rd Class Ngoc T Truong Huynh, 25, from Oakville, CT; and Yeoman 3rd Class Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25, from San Diego, CA. Bottom row (L-R) Fire Controlman 1st Class Gary Leo Rehm Jr., from Elyria, OH; Personnel Specialist 1st Class Xavier Alec Martin, 24, from Halethorpe, MD; and Gunner's Mate 2nd Class Noe Hernandez, 26, from Weslaco, TX.

A combination photo of the dead sailors identified by the U.S. Navy in the collision incident between U.S. Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald and Philippine-flagged merchant vessel south of Tokyo Bay on June 17, 2017. Top row (L-R) Fire Controlman 2nd Class Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan, 23, from Chula Vista, CA; Gunner’s Mate Seaman Dakota Kyle Rigsby, 19, from Palmyra, VA; Sonar Technician 3rd Class Ngoc T Truong Huynh, 25, from Oakville, CT; and Yeoman 3rd Class Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25, from San Diego, CA. Bottom row (L-R) Fire Controlman 1st Class Gary Leo Rehm Jr., from Elyria, OH; Personnel Specialist 1st Class Xavier Alec Martin, 24, from Halethorpe, MD; and Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class Noe Hernandez, 26, from Weslaco, TX. U.S. Navy/Handout via REUTERS

 

The U.S. Navy on Monday identified the dead sailors as: Dakota Kyle Rigsby, 19, from Palmyra, Virginia; Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25, from San Diego, California; Ngoc T Truong Huynh, 25, from Oakville, Connecticut; Noe Hernandez, 26, from Weslaco, Texas; Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan, 23, from Chula Vista, California; Xavier Alec Martin, 24, from Halethorpe, Maryland; and Gary Leo Rehm Jr., 37, from Elyria, Ohio.

Two of three injured crew members who were evacuated from the ship by helicopter, including the ship’s commanding officer, Commander Bryce Benson, were released from the U.S. Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet said on its Facebook page on Monday. The last sailor remained in hospital and no details were given about his condition.

Vice Admiral Joseph P. Aucoin, the Seventh Fleet commander, was asked on Sunday if damage on the starboard side indicated the U.S. ship could have been at fault, but he declined to speculate on the cause of the collision. Maritime rules suggest vessels are supposed to give way to ships on their starboard.

Japanese authorities were looking into the possibility of “endangerment of traffic caused by professional negligence”, Japanese media reported, but it was not clear whether that might apply to either or both of the vessels.

Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said the government was investigating with the cooperation of the U.S. side and every effort would be made to maintain regional deterrence in the face of North Korea, which has recently conducted a series of missile tests.

“It is extremely important to maintain U.S. deterrence in the light of an increasingly severe regional security situation,” he told a news conference.

“We will maintain close contact with international society, including the United States and South Korea, to maintain vigilance and protect the safety of our people.”

The incident has sparked as many as three investigations by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard, and two by Japanese authorities.

Complicating the inquiries could be issues of which side has jurisdiction and access to data such as radar records that the United States could deem classified.

Although the collision occurred in Japanese waters, under a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that defines the scope of the U.S. military’s authority in Japan, the U.S. Navy could claim it has the authority to lead the investigations.

The three U.S. investigations include a JAGMAN command investigation often used to look into the cause of major incidents, which can be used as a basis to file lawsuits against the Navy.

“We will coordinate with Japanese authorities on investigations and will address specific requests for access in accordance with normal procedures,” a Navy spokesman said.

The ship is salvageable, Aucoin said, but repairs would likely take months.

This incident was the greatest loss of life on a U.S. Navy vessel since the USS Cole was bombed in Yemen’s Aden harbor in 2000, when 17 sailors were killed and 39 injured.

Naval historians recall possibly the last time a warship was hit by a larger vessel in peacetime was in 1964 off the coast of Australia. The HMAS Melbourne, an aircraft carrier, collided with the destroyer HMAS Voyager, shearing the much smaller vessel in half and killing 82 of the Voyager’s crew.

(Reporting by Tim Kelly, Kaori Kaneko, Elaine Lies, Linda Sieg, Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Malcolm Foster and Michael Perry)