U.S. Faces Sea Power Gap in China’s Backyard As Carriers Leave Asia

The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and its escorts are racing from Asia to the Middle East, leaving a rare carrier gap in the Western Pacific region where it hopes to counter China’s expanding military footprint.

The Roosevelt recently participated in the Freedom Edge exercise alongside U.S. treaty allies Japan and South Korea, much to the chagrin of Kim Jong Un‘s North. The East China Sea drills from June 27-29 were its final maneuvers in the region for some time.

Aerial imagery captured on Wednesday by the European Space Agency‘s Sentinel-2A Earth observation satellite showed the Nimitz-class supercarrier steaming into the South China Sea via the Luzon Strait, a strategic waterway linking the contested trade waters to the Philippine Sea.

Its movements were tracked by the Beijing-based SCSPI think tank, creating a rare instance of an American carrier group sharing maritime space with a naval formulation led by one of China‘s own aircraft carriers.

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Images released by the Pentagon showed the Roosevelt was last in the South China Sea on June 13. The ship departed San Diego in January and mostly patrolled the Western Pacific during its deployment.

On June 22, the U.S. military announced that the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, after responding to multiple Houthi attacks, had departed the Red Sea and was returning home.

Its presence in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, which covers the Middle East as well as parts of North Africa and Central Asia, would be replaced by the Roosevelt carrier strike group.

With the Roosevelt leaving the Indo-Pacific region, its sister ship the USS Ronald Reagan also is no longer in the Western Pacific, part of the U.S. Seventh Fleet’s area of responsibility.

USNI News, run by the U.S. Naval Institute, reported on Monday that the Reagan was underway in the U.S. Third Fleet’s area of operations in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, having previously departed the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, for the last time in May.

This summer, the Reagan is scheduled to conduct a carrier swap in California with the Nimitz-class USS George Washington. The Washington, which is currently operating in waters off the western coast of South America, will take over as the only forward-deployed aircraft carrier in Japan.

Before the Washington arrives at the Seventh Fleet headquarters, however, no American aircraft carrier will be available to support crises or respond to contingencies in the Western Pacific, a stated priority at the Pentagon.

“We are confident in our current force posture and operations in the region to ensure peace and stability and to meet our national security commitments,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told Newsweek in May in response to a related query.

The Roosevelt will stay on station in the Red Sea until its U.S. East Coast-based sister ship the USS Harry S. Truman deploys later this summer, according to USNI News.

The Roosevelt‘s brief return to the South China Sea comes as the Chinese navy conducts a rare “twin carrier” exercise near the Beijing-controlled Paracel Islands.

Sentinel-2A imagery captured on Tuesday showed the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong and one Type 075 helicopter carrier sailing in formation with at least six other warships about 50 miles northeast of the disputed Woody Island, known as Yongxing in Chinese.

China’s Maritime Safety Administration on Wednesday issued two navigation warnings for military exercises east and west of the country’s southern Hainan province. Both danger zones will last through July 10, according to the announcement, leaving open the possibility of maneuvers involving the Shandong strike group.

The Chinese Defense Ministry could not be reached for comment.