Japan plans to dispatch its largest warship on a three-month tour through the South China Sea beginning in May, three sources said, in its biggest show of naval force in the region since World War II.
China claims almost all the disputed waters and its growing military presence has fueled concern in Japan and the West, with the US holding regular air and naval patrols to ensure freedom of navigation.
The Izumo helicopter carrier, commissioned just two years ago, is to make stops in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka before joining the Malabar joint naval exercise with Indian and US naval vessels in the Indian Ocean in July.
It is scheduled to return to Japan in August, the sources said.
“The aim is to test the capability of the Izumo by sending it out on an extended mission,” one of the sources who has knowledge of the plan said.
“It will train with the US Navy in the South China Sea,” he said, asking not to be identified because he is not authorized to talk to the media.
A spokesman for Japan’s Maritime Self Defence Force declined to comment.
Japan does not have any claim to the waters, but has a separate maritime dispute with China in the East China Sea.
Japan wants to invite Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has pushed ties with China in recent months as he has criticized the nation’s old alliance with the US, to visit the Izumo when it visits Subic Bay, about 100km west of Manila, another of the sources said.
The 249m-long Izumo is as large as Japan’s World War II-era carriers and can operate up to nine helicopters. It resembles the amphibious assault carriers used by the US Marines, but lacks their well deck for launching landing craft and other vessels.
Japan has designated the Izumo as a destroyer because the constitution forbids the acquisition of offensive weapons. The vessel, nonetheless, allows Japan to project military power well beyond its territory.
Based in Yokosuka, near to Tokyo — which is also home to the US Seventh Fleet’s carrier — the Ronald Reagan, the Izumo’s primary mission is anti-submarine warfare.
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