Shangri La Singapore

Explainer: South China Sea -- Asia's most dangerous waters

Hong Kong, China (CNN) -- The South China Sea - a 1.3 million square mile patch of the Pacific Ocean bracketed by China and several Southeast Asian nations - is dotted with hundreds of largely uninhabited islands and coral atolls that biologists say is home to one of the world's most diverse collection of undersea life.

Also under its waves lie potentially huge reserves of natural gas and oil. A Chinese estimate suggests as much as 213 billion barrels of oil lie untapped in the South China Sea - which, if true, would make it the largest oil reserves outside of Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

That prospect has cross-stitched the sea with competing claims from China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. A recent spate of incidents between Chinese and Vietnamese vessels in the sea has fueled a growing rift between the communist neighbors, creating strange bedfellows as Hanoi embraces closer military ties with historic foes in Washington, D.C.

The South China Sea has now become a petri dish for swirling changes churning the geopolitical landscape, analysts say, as the rising power of China butts up against the established economic and military might of the U.S.

"How these disputes are resolved will tell us how politics in Asia is going to play out in the next 20 to 30 years," said Mark Valencia, a fellow at the National Asia Research Program and expert on the South China Sea dispute. "This will be the blueprint."

Why is this happening now?

The competing stakes in the South China Sea are nothing new - territorial claims to the islands stretch back decades, even centuries, according to some of the nations vying in the sea grab. The dispute took center stage earlier this month when defense officials from 28 Asia-Pacific nations gathered at the Shangri-La hotel in Singapore. China, for the first time, sent its top solider to the annual meeting - General Liang Guanglie - who spoke at length about China's peace-loving nature and focus on cooperative development and security in the region.

His olive branch was met with skepticism, said Alan Dupont, a regional security analyst who was at the meeting. "It was a packed hall, and there were a lot of hostile questions directed to China from (participants from) Asia and the United States," said Dupont, director of the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

Versatile US warships for regional ballast

By Ian Storey, For The Straits Times, 30 June 2011

IN HIS speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue earlier this month, the United States’ outgoing Defence Secretary Robert Gates revealed that in the coming years, the US Navy would deploy some of its newest and most versatile warships to Singapore.

The announcement was important for two reasons: first, it signals a significant strengthening of the US-Singapore defence relationship; and second, it will help fulfil Mr Gates’ pledge that America is committed to maintaining a robust military presence in Asia aimed at underpinning regional stability.

The vessels to be deployed to Singapore are littoral combat ships, or LCS. The LCS is a new class of warships able to operate in very shallow waters close to shore, otherwise known as the littoral. The ships are designed to counter asymmetric threats such as coastal mines, quiet diesel-electric submarines, and pirates and terrorists using small boats.

The LCS is fast, highly manoeuvrable and stealthy. It can achieve a sprint speed of more than 40 knots and has a range of 5,630km. Equivalent in size to a small frigate, the ship can be operated by only 40 to 50 personnel. It carries two Seahawk helicopters and is capable of launching unmanned air, surface and underwater vehicles.

The most unique aspect of the LCS is its modular design, which allows the ship to be quickly reconfigured for specific missions. Exchangeable mission modules the size of a shipping container equip the LCS for mine countermeasures and anti- submarine and anti-surface warfare, but can also be utilised for other tasks including intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance, the insertion and recovery of special forces ashore, and humanitarian and disaster relief.

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.

Despite massive cost overruns, the US Navy has plans to acquire 55 LCS at a cost of US$37.4 billion (S$46.4 billion). Last December, it awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin and Austal USA to build 10 ships each between this year and 2015. Several of these new ships will soon find themselves on the way to Singapore.

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