The U.S. Navy rehearsed wartime repairs and maintenance on an amphibious assault ship at a port located within the central interior of the Philippines last month in an exercise designed to validate the service’s expeditionary sustainment capabilities in the Western Pacific.
USS Ashland (LSD-48), a Whidbey Island-class landing ship dock, conducted the simulated wartime repairs at Cebu South Port. Compared to other hubs of U.S.-Philippine defense activity such as Subic Bay and Clark, Cebu is located farther away from South China Sea hotspots and could present a more difficult target to adversary forces during a conflict. The city’s dual-use airport has already been tapped by Washington and Manila during their original inking of the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which stipulates the use of certain Philippine facilities by American forces to host troops, stage equipment and construct facilities in support of mutual defense.
“This exercise allowed us to work shoulder-to-shoulder with our Philippine allies to conduct complex repairs while keeping USS Ashland ready to respond to any contingency in the region,” said Cmdr. Adam Peeples, the ship’s commanding officer, in a press release on the activity.
Philippine Naval Sea Systems Command personnel and local contractors participated in the exercise. Alongside the exercise’s battle damage assessment, Ashland‘s crew carried concurrent expeditionary repair and continuous maintenance availabilities during their time in Cebu. Last summer, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Benfold (DDG-65) conducted a similar wartime repairs exercise at the former U.S. naval installation at Subic Bay.
These activities come amid the service’s efforts to prepare for a potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific, which could see American warship face high-intensity conflict against a peer adversaries far away from their home bases. Moreover, American naval forces currently rely on a limited number of naval facilities west of the international date line, increasing the need for forward-deployed sustainment capabilities at allied ports. A number of companies in the region were qualified with Master Ship Repair Agreements and other certifications that would allow foreign shipyards to maintain U.S. naval vessels during the tenure of former Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro.
Naval Supply Systems Command sought out a forward-based contractor from Singapore last fall to carry out contracted repairs at yards across the region clustered in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia and India.
