The U.S. is redeploying the USS Minnesota, a conventionally-armed nuclear-powered attack submarine from Hawaii to the U.S. naval contingent in Guam, placing it on the second island chain in the Pacific Rim, far closer to the coast of China. Guam will now become the [Minnesota}’s home port.
The deployment is allegedly in response to China’s buildup of their naval forces, and their recent “venturing out” into the central Pacific. Unlike the assumed prerogative of the U.S. Navy to sail wherever and whenever they wish, Chinese vessels on the high seas of the Pacific are presumed “unfriendly.”
