The United States will soon upgrade its submarine force at a crucial military hub in the Western Pacific Ocean, Newsweek has learned, a decision that comes amid China’s rapid naval buildup and its expanded operations at sea further from its shores.
The Virginia-class USS Minnesota, a nuclear-powered but conventionally armed cruise missile fast attack submarine, is scheduled to conduct a change of home port from Hawaii to Guam in the new fiscal year beginning on October 1, Lt. Cmdr. Rick Moore, a spokesperson for the U.S. Pacific Fleet commander’s principal adviser on submarine affairs, said in response to an emailed inquiry.
Guam is part of the so-called Second Island chain, a series of islands stretching from Japan in the north to New Guinea in the south. Together with the first island chain connecting U.S.-allied Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, they are layers of a Cold War defense concept that sought to constraint communist China’s naval and air activity in wartime.
U.S. military leaders say China is in the middle of the largest conventional military buildup since World War II; its forces already regularly operate beyond the first island chain. And recent deployments have taken them far beyond the second, with a four-ship flotilla and a joint bomber patrol with Russia last month both reaching the Bering Sea near Alaska.
News of Minnesota‘s repositioning first appeared in photographs published last month by the U.S. Navy. They showed the 7,800-ton, 377-foot submarine beginning sea trials in June following planned maintenance work at Pearl Harbor, its current home port.
The Navy says the Virginia class, in service since the early 2000s, has enhanced warfighting capabilities, including in coastal operations, to support anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, and strike warfare, as well as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions.
