The U.S. Navy has again sent ships through the Taiwan Strait, making transits of the waterway increasingly regular amid growing economic and military acrimony between the United States and China.
The U.S. Navy has ramped up its operations in the strait over the past year, sailing through the 180-km waterway that separates Taiwan from China at least eight times in about nine months. Prior to that, such operations were considered relatively rare, occurring at a pace of about once a year.
The most recent transit was carried out Wednesday by USS Preble guided-missile destroyer and the navy oil tanker Walter S. Diehl, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet told The Japan Times on Thursday.