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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2016
US Paci¿c Fleet shrinks while China grows aggressive
By AUDREY MCAVOY
Associated Press
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii
— When the U.S. wanted to
show the world it didn’t rec-
ognize what it called China’s
“excessive” territorial claims
in disputed waters of the South
China Sea this fall, it sent a
warship near one of Beijing’s
newl\ Euilt arti¿cial reefs.
The move came amid a de-
bate about whether the U.S.
has enough ships to meet chal-
lenges posed by a fast-grow-
ing, increasingly assertive
Chinese navy that is unsettling
some of its neighbors. In its
latest move, China announced
last week that it would build its
second aircraft carrier, this one
with domestic technology.
The Navy and its regional
component, the U.S. Paci¿c
Fleet, both have fewer ships
now than in the mid-1990s.
Navy of¿cials say vastly im-
proved technology on those
vessels outweighs any disad-
vantage from a drop in num-
bers.
Questions about whether
the Paci¿c Fleet has enough
resources are more of a reÀec-
tion of regional anxieties than
the Navy’s actual capability,
said its commander, Adm.
Scott Swift.
Even if the entire Àeet was
in the South China Sea, he said,
he’d still get asked whether the
U.S. was bringing more forces.
“It’s this sense of angst that
I hear from those in the region,
driven by the uncertainty and
the rhetoric and, you know, the
challenges that the region is
facing right now,” Swift said.
“But I’m very comfortable
with the resources I have.”
An expert at the Austra-
lian Strategic Policy Institute
think tank said the issue in
peacetime is whether there are
enough American vessels to
reassure friends and allies and
demonstrate U.S. capacity to
use power when it needs to.
In wartime, it comes down
to whether enough platforms
survive missile strikes to carry
on their work, Peter Jennings
said.
“I think this is emerging as
a serious long-term problem,”
he said.
The Paci¿c Fleet current-
ly has 182 vessels, including
combat ships like aircraft car-
riers as well as auxiliary and
logistics vessels, said spokes-
man Cmdr. Clay Doss. That
compares to 192 nearly two
decades ago.
Around the world, the
Navy has 272 ships usable in
combat or to support ships in
combat, nearly 20 percent less
than 1998. The current total in-
cludes 10 aircraft carriers.
Swift said he would rather
have the Navy he has today
— and its advanced technol-
ogy — than the Navy of two
decades ago.
He pointed to the USS Ben-
fold, a guided missile destroy-
er upgraded with new ballistic
missile defenses, as well as
three new stealth destroyers,
the DDG-1000, in the pipeline,
as examples.
One consequence of a
smaller Àeet has been more
time at sea. Retired Adm. Zap
Zlatoper, who commanded Pa-
ci¿c Fleet in the 1990s, said
Eugene Hoshiko/AP Photo
Family members of sailors wave as the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan arrives at a U.S. Navy base in Yokosuka, Japan south of Tokyo,
Oct. 1. The U.S. Pacific Fleet is smaller than it was in the 1990s, helping fuel a debate about whether the U.S. has enough ships to meet challenges
posed by fast-growing and increasingly assertive Chinese naval forces.
Arun Sankar K./AP Photo
Caleb Jones/AP Photo
The U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship USS Essex off the coast of Bellows Air Force
Station, Hawaii during amphibious exercises in May.
six-month deployments used
to be “sacrosanct” as anything
longer made it harder for the
Navy to retain sailors.
Ships now deploy for an av-
erage of seven to nine months,
though the Navy plans to low-
er this to seven.
Ship conditions have also
suffered. The USS Essex left
an exercise with Australia
early in 2011 and skipped an-
other with Thailand the fol-
lowing year because it devel-
oped mechanical problems
after delaying maintenance
to stay at sea.
Bryan Clark, a senior fel-
low at the Center for Strategic
and Budgetary Assessments,
a Washington think tank, said
these are signs the status quo is
unsustainable.
In a November report, Clark
outlined alternatives: build
more ships, though this would
require money Congress may
not give the Navy or deploy
less, though the Pentagon has
been reluctant to accept less of
an overseas presence.
The other choices: keep
more ships at overseas bases
where they would be closer to
where they operate or mix up
how ships deploy, for example
by sending fewer escorts with
an aircraft carrier which would
free some ships to operate sep-
arately.
China’s People’s Liberation
Army Navy has more than 300
surface ships, submarines, am-
phibious ships and patrol craft,
according to the Pentagon’s
Asia-Paci¿c 0aritime Securi-
ty Strategy report released in
August.
China’s coast guard and
other maritime law enforce-
ment Àeet, meanwhile, has
upward of 200 ships — more
than the combined Àeets of
neighbors with competing
claims to tiny islands in the
East and South China Seas.
The U.S. Coast Guard has
about 280 cutters, or ves-
sels at least 65 feet in length,
though they primarily operate
stateside.
China has also grown
more aggressive in asserting
A U.S. Navy helicopter approaches to land on the deck of
the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt as
the USS Normandy sails nearby during Exercise Malabar
2015 about 150 miles off Chennai, India, Oct. 17.
its claims to disputed territo-
ry. Since December 2013, it’s
built what the U.S. estimates
to be 3,000 acres of arti¿cial
islands in the South China Sea
using sand dredged from the
ocean Àoor.
China has said the islands
are meant to help ships, ¿sh-
ermen and disaster relief.
The U.S. says the islands
will enable China to expand
its maritime law enforcement
and naval presence further
south. It worries China could
use them to disrupt sea traf-
¿c in the South China Sea, a
thoroughfare for 30 percent of
global maritime trade.
Some of China’s ships are
rudimentary, like its existing
aircraft carrier.
But Narushige 0ichishita,
Japan scholar at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center
for Scholars in Washington,
said the lay person doesn’t
know this so the vessels have
the same psychological effect
on the public as more ad-
vanced ones.
Further, he said U.S. forc-
es are spread around the world
while China is focused on its
own neighborhood.
“So even if the United
States spends much more than
China, it doesn’t mean the
local balance stays the same.
The local balance in Asia is
rapidly changing,” 0ichishita
said.
Deputy: Hillard is expected to make a full recovery
Continued from Page 1A
After a couple of more
weeks of recovery at Oregon
Health & Science University
Hospital in Portland, he re-
turned home last Tuesday.
“They were very close to
saying, ‘You are done,’” Hillard
said. “I feel very fortunate.”
Best Christmas
present ever
Shortly after returning
home, Hillard and his wife vis-
ited his co-workers at the Clat-
sop County Courthouse and
Sheriff’s Of¿ce. He said peo-
ple were surprised to see him.
“They welcomed me with
open arms, laughter, hugs and
tears,” he said. “It’s been kind
of surreal.”
Ben Bradshaw, the victim
services coordinator in the Dis-
trict Attorney’s Of¿ce, echoes
many people who know Hil-
lard when he describes the past
month as unreal. Others have
simply called it a miracle.
“Dave Hillard is one of
those guys that you look up
to. He is a good father, good
husband, good friend and good
co-worker. He is the best kind
of people there are,” Bradshaw
said. “I have lost very good
people in my life, but this is the
only one I got back. It is unre-
al. Absolutely unreal.”
Hillard’s wife and seven
children are thankful for all of
the support and outreach from
the community, including all
of the well-wishes posted to
Facebook. People around the
world, in places such as Thai-
land, Africa and South Korea
were all praying for Hillard’s
recovery.
0ichelle Hillard joked that
her husband will have a hard
time topping this year’s Christ-
mas present of waking up in
time for the holiday.
“We are getting a very full
season of Christmas this year!”
she wrote on Facebook. “God
has been so good and merciful
to us this year. Everyone of
you have been so good to us. I
can still (barely) believe David
is alive and doing so well. Best
Christmas present, ever!”
Road to recovery
Hillard is expected to make
a full recovery.
He will meet with a cardiol-
ogist next week, and will con-
tinue speech and physical ther-
apy sessions since his muscles
atrophied while in the hospital.
He lost 23 pounds.
The threat of heart attacks
run deep in Hillard’s fami-
ly. His father died at 66 from
a massive heart attack about
four years ago. Heart attacks
also claimed Hillard’s uncle,
grandfather and great uncle.
After Hillard’s episode, he
said, his brothers are planning
to get their hearts checked.
Hillard has no memory of
the heart attack. He does not
recall being Àown to Portland
and placed in an extracorpo-
real membrane oxygenation
machine that helped support
Submitted Photo
Dave Hillard, shown with his family, nearly died in December after a heart attack.
his heart and lungs.
The whole experience has
helped him remember what is
important in life.
“I need to focus on my fam-
ily and focus on my health,” he
said.
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