U.S., Japan, S.Korea, Australia hold first naval drills in Western Pacific

TOKYO, May 23 (Reuters) - U.S. Navy ships conducted joint
drills with warships from allies Japan, Australia and South
Korea in their first combined exercise in the Western Pacific,
the U.S. Navy said on Thursday.
The Pacific Vanguard exercise near the U.S. island of Guam
takes place ahead of President Donald Trump's visit to Japan
this weekend, as Washington looks to allies in Asia to help
counter China's military might in the region. "Pacific Vanguard joins forces from four, like-minded
maritime nations that provide security throughout the
Indo-Pacific based on shared values and common interests," Vice
Admiral Phillip Sawyer, commander of the U.S. Navy's Seventh
Fleet, said in a statement.
The six-day exercise involves two Japanese destroyers, two
Australian frigates and a destroyer from South Korea, with as
many as 3,000 sailors participating.
The U.S. Navy has deployed five ships as well as fighter
jets and maritime patrol planes for the drills, which include
live fire and anti-submarine warfare exercises.
Pacific Vanguard is the latest show of combined naval force
in the Asia Pacific region.
This month U.S. ships conducted drills with French, Japanese
and Australian ships in the Bay of Bengal, and held separate
exercises with a Japanese helicopter carrier and warships from
India and the Philippines in the disputed South China Sea.

China claims almost all of the strategic South China Sea,
through which passes about a third of global seaborne trade.
Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam
have competing claims to the waterway.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Navy sent two ships through the
Taiwan Strait, its latest transit through the sensitive waterway
and a move likely to anger Beijing at a time of tense relations
between the world's two biggest economies. Taiwan is one of a growing number of flashpoints in the
U.S.-China relationship, which also include a bitter trade war,
U.S. sanctions and China's increasingly muscular military
posture in the South China Sea, where the United States also
conducts freedom-of-navigation patrols.