By JOHN T. BENNETT
WASHINGTON — A study group is calling on US officials and lawmakers to dramatically increase America’s naval footprint in the Pacific to “offset China’s growing military capabilities.”
In its annual report, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission calls for an American “surge [of] naval assets in the event of a contingency.”
The commission, created by Congress in 2000, calls on lawmakers to “fund the US Navy’s shipbuilding and operations efforts to increase its presence in the Asia Pacific to at least 60 ships and rebalance homeports to 60 percent in the region by 2020 so that the United States will have the capacity to maintain readiness and presence in the Western Pacific.”
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