Throughout 2023, the United States has worked alongside allies and partners to deliver groundbreaking achievements for peace, stability, and deterrence in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific region. As Secretary Austin has said, “In this decisive decade, 2023 will be remembered as a decisive year for implementing U.S. defense strategy in Asia.” Transforming U.S. Regional Force Posture In 2023, the United States delivered historic achievements with allies and partners to make U.S. force posture in the Indo-Pacific region more mobile, distributed, resilient, and lethal, including by: Forward stationing key U.S. military units to Japan, including a U.S. Marine Littoral Regiment – the Marine Corps’ most advanced formation – and a U.S. Army watercraft unit to significantly enhance combat-credible deterrence. Launching a series of new force postures initiatives with Australia, including more and longer expeditionary visits of U.S. submarines resulting from AUKUS, increased rotations of U.S. bombers and fighters, expanded maritime and ground forces cooperation, enhanced space and logistics cooperation, continuing upgrades of key bases, and movement toward the creation of Submarine Rotational Force-West in Australia by 2027. Expanding U.S. rotational access across the Philippines by designating four new Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites at strategic locations, which will strengthen the interoperability of U.S. and Philippine armed forces and allow both countries to address shared challenges in the Indo-Pacific region. Concluding a Defense Cooperation Agreement with Papua New Guinea (PNG) that builds on decades of bilateral defense and security cooperation, strengthens the U.S.-PNG relationship, and increases regional stability and security. Bolstering deterrence and increasing strategic asset rotations to the Korean Peninsula, including the first port call of a U.S. SSBN to the Republic of Korea (ROK) in over 40 years and the first landing of a U.S. nuclear-capable B-52 on the Peninsula since 1988. List of achievements in […]