YOKOSUKA, Japan — The US and Japan will look at the viability of using Japanese shipyards to overhaul US navy warships that patrol East Asian waters, the US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said on Friday (Jan 19) at the Yokosuka naval base near Tokyo.
Doing refits in Japan could help the US keep more of its ships battle-ready in East Asia where China is expanding its naval power. The US navy currently sends its ships back across the Pacific to shipyards at home that are wrestling with a backlog of maintenance contracts.
The US Navy will need more maintenance capacity as it expands its fleet over the coming decades.
Japan hosts the biggest overseas concentration of US military power, including the only forward-deployed carrier strike group, which operates from Yokosuka. The Seventh Fleet, of which it is a part, commands up to 70 ships and submarines, most of them based in Japan.
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