By Thai Newsroom Reporters
IN WHAT WAS SEEN AS a rare event in the Indo-Pacific region, a couple of the United States air force’s F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters recently paid a brief visit to Brunei.
The two Lockheed Martin F-35As flew from Eielson air force base in Alaska to Rimba air force base in Brunei over the last weekend, making the fifth-generation fighter jets the first US combat aircraft to land in the tiny Southeast Asian island state in four decades.
The US and Brunei air forces have mutually planned to promote working relationships and support a regional security cooperation and partnership whilst China has evidently attempted to stage maritime expansionism over reefs and atolls in the tension-filled South China Sea with virtually ubiquitous deployment of its warships, Coast Guard and maritime militia forces.
Brunei, one of the Southeast Asian claimants of territorial sovereignty over a number of submerged coral reefs in the resource-rich South China Sea which is part of the West Pacific Ocean, has not been reported so far to have a single fighter or bomber of its own and is only deploying utility helicopters and transport planes. Other mutually contradictory claimants of territorial sovereignty over submerged coral reefs in the South China Sea include the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and China.
The Philippines has so far appeared the most affected by Chinese naval ships’ provocative maritime manoeuvres in vicinity of various reefs and atolls where the Philippine Coast Guard vessels were on a resupply mission for Philippine navy troops and fishermen.
Some Chinese Coast Guard ships fired water cannons at Philippine Coast Guard vessels in the island republic’s exclusive economic zone whilst others rapidly sailed past Philippine vessels in provocative, near-collision manner.
Meanwhile, the US navy’s aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) is currently sailing in the South China Sea as the flagship of a Carrier Strike Group consisting of a cruiser, destroyers and other naval ships and deploying aboard squadrons of Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters.
The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt has recently sailed past a strategic strait between Taiwan and the Philippines, both of which have sustainably engaged in disputes with China.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt-led Carrier Strike Group had earlier joined the US navy’s aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) in a maritime exercise with Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Force and South Korean naval ships in the East China Sea to showcase operational capabilities and coordinated combat readiness.
CAPTIONS:
Top: An F-35 fighter flying in the sky. Photo: Reuters and published by BBC
Front Page: Four new F-35 jets arriving in the UK in 2018. Photo: Getty Images and published by BBC
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