Cries of pleasure echoed throughout a Navy pier in San Diego Monday because the well-known hospital ship USNS Mercy returned from deployment within the Indo-Pacific, the place China is making an attempt to strike safety partnerships with long-standing U.S. allies.
Lots of the ship’s 800 crew members streamed into the arms of family and friends at Naval Air Station North Island as Mercy wrapped up a five-month mission simply two days earlier than Valentine’s Day.
Monique Salas of San Diego was holding an indication that learn “Will you be my Valentine?” to be a magnet for her boyfriend, Bryan Cruz, an inside communications electrician 2nd class. He discovered her and gave her a hearty kiss.
The 894-foot Mercy — which has a particular white hull adorned with an enormous crimson cross — had visited the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia.
The mission was primarily to offer medical care and humanitarian and catastrophe aid coaching to the Pacific islands. The Mercy — which has participated in such conflicts as Operation Desert Storm — has to this point carried out greater than 410 surgical procedures and 12,000 dental procedures throughout the deployment.
The Indo-Pacific is a area of rising pressure. China has repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan and has harassed some U.S. warships which have been working to maintain worldwide delivery lanes open within the South China Sea.
The Biden administration has mentioned it’ll quickly come to Taiwan’s support if an invasion happens.
China, in flip, has been making an attempt to domesticate partnerships with such American allies because the Solomon Islands, which signed a safety settlement with Beijing two years in the past.
The united statesCarl Vinson and USS Theodore Roosevelt strike teams, that are each based mostly in San Diego, are presently deployed to the Indo-Pacific. It’s probably {that a} third San Diego-based service, the usAbraham Lincoln, will deploy to that area later this yr.
In the meantime, the Navy’s latest ship, the expeditionary sea base USS John L. Canley, will be part of the Navy’s lively fleet on Saturday when it’s commissioned at Naval Air Station North Island.
The 784-foot ship, which was constructed at Normal Dynamics-NASSCO in San Diego, is a brand new kind of ship that is designed to deploy troops and tools in areas the place the U.S. would not have quick access to land bases and seaports.
This story initially appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.
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