US destroyer deployed to Black Sea, no port calls planned
9 April 2014, 14:18 -- The US Navy destroyer Donald Cook, which should enter the Black Sea on April 10, apparently has no plans for any port calls, a Russian military source told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.
It's expected that the warship equipped with [the Aegis fire control system and Tomahawk subsonic cruise missiles] will be deployed in the eastern part of the Black Sea, the source said. The Donald Cook will be the second US warship to enter the Black Sea as of late.
The guided missile destroyer USS Truxton extended its deployment in the Black Sea, Deputy White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said last week.
US missile cruiser Donald Cook heading for Black Sea - media
USS Donald Cook, a missile cruiser, is due to begin a "tour of duty" in the Black Sea water area within the next few days, Bulgarian mass media said Tuesday, according tot Itar-Tass. Sources at the Bulgarian Defense Ministry said that US naval forces and their allies will have war games at sea. Also, the Donald Cook will whole call into a number of ports along coast, including some ports in Bulgaria. In addition to this, some 175 US marines will be deployed at the Romanian coast.
Derek Chollet, the US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs who is a principal advisor to the secretary on security strategy and policy issues, told a group of Congressmen earlier Tuesday that one more US ship would be dispatched to the Black Sea in addition to the destroyer Truxton, which is already there.
Chollet said the demonstration of US commitment to its obligations on maintaining international security to other member-states of the North Atlantic pact was a crucial element of the US strategy, which included among other things like a prolongation of the Truxton's detour to the Black Sea for war games with Romanian and Bulgarian forces and the dispatching of one more ship to the area within a few days.
Chollet said however the Pentagon did not plan a drastic revision of the defense budget in the wake of recent steps undertaken by Russia, which responded to an expression of legitimate will of the predominantly Russian-speaking population of Crimea to reunify with the motherland after six decades of a controversial forced affiliation with Ukraine.
He said that the basic strategic guideline of the four-year budget forecast of the Pentagon remained unchanged and the US Armed Forces would continue doing the same things it had been doing before the current crisis over Ukraine.
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