U.S. plans 10-month warship deployment to Singapore

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first of a new class of U.S. coastal warships will be sent to Singapore next spring for a roughly 10-month deployment, the Navy said on Wednesday, spotlighting a move that may stir China's fears of U.S. involvement in South China Sea disputes.

Deployment of the shallow-draft ship "Freedom" will help refine crew rotations, logistics and maintenance processes to maximize the class's value to U.S. combat commanders, Rear Admiral Thomas Rowden, the Navy's director of surface warfare, told reporters.

"We'll be deploying the ship for about 10 months in the spring of next year" to Singapore, he said in a teleconference. "In the meantime, we're prepping her for success in the execution of that deployment."

Singapore is strategically located along the Strait of Malacca, the chief link between the Indian and Pacific Oceans through which flows about 40 percent of world trade.

The government has discussed hosting up to four such U.S. "Littoral Combat Ships," or LCS, on a rotational basis at its naval facilities. Both countries have said the deployment stops short of a basing agreement.

It signals Washington's "commitment to the region and enhances its ability to train and engage with regional partners," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his Singapore counterpart, Ng Eng Hen, said in a joint statement last month after meeting at the Pentagon.

President Barack Obama last year ordered stepped-up emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region in a "rebalancing" of U.S. national security planning after a decade of land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Included in the so-called pivot to the Pacific would be the LCS stationing in Singapore, a rotational U.S. Marine Corps presence in northern Australia and new areas for military cooperation with the Philippines.