![\"American](\"http:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/American-Armada-photo.jpg\" "\\"American")
<\/p>\nThe US Navy has deployed a small armada to the disputed islands in the South China Sea, according to The Navy Times.<\/p>\n
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America’s USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier<\/strong>, destroyers Chung-Hoon and Stockdale, cruisers Antietam and Mobile Bay, and Japan’s\u00a0Blue Ridge were deployed<\/a> after China installed HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles<\/a> on Woody Island,\u00a0one of the most central swathes of land in the disputed waters.<\/p>\n “China is clearly militarizing the South China Sea, and you’d have to believe in the flat Earth to think otherwise,” US PACOM Commander Harry Harris recently\u00a0warned. <\/a><\/p>\n “Our ships and aircraft operate routinely throughout the Western Pacific \u2014 including the South China Sea \u2014 and have for decades,” US Navy Cmdr. Clay Doss said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n “In 2015 alone, Pacific Fleet ships sailed about 700 combined days in the South China Sea.”<\/p>\n But carrier strike group’s presence in the disputed waters speaks for itself.<\/p>\n “Clearly the Navy is demonstrating its full commitment to freedom of navigation in the region,\u201d said Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain.<\/p>\n Additionally, US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter said that the US is willing to spend $425 million<\/a> on joint military exercises with nations in the Pacific who feel threatened by China’s militarization of the major trade route.<\/p>\n