Special to WorldTribune.com

WASHINGTON — The United States plans to expand its naval presence in
Bahrain.

Officials said the U.S. Navy has received approval to increase its fleet
in the Gulf. They said the fleet would include the arrival of two coastal
patrol boats in the spring of 2014.

“Bahrain is going to suddenly emerge,” Navy operations chief Adm. Jonathan Greenert said.

In an address to sailors in Manama on Nov. 27, Greenert outlined a plan to enhance the Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain. The admiral said the Navy would
receive the Littoral Combat Ship for de-mining missions in the Gulf in 2018.

The Fifth Fleet, comprised of some 3,000 sailors and Defense Department employees, would also receive additional manpower. Greenert said the Navy,
assigned to build additional facilities, would send an unspecified number of
personnel as well as their families to Manama.

“We have to get hot on some things,” Greenert said. “Bahrain has a plan,
it has a cost, it’s in our budget.”

Greenert also said the Fifth Fleet would also acquire new equipment over
the next few years. He dismissed reports that the Navy was considering
alternatives to Bahrain, host of the U.S. fleet for more than 40 years.

“We don’t have that kind of deep relationship with any other country
that we have with Bahrain,” Greenert told the U.S. military daily Stars and
Stripes.

  Adm. Jonathan Greenert, Littoral Combat Ship, U.S. adding patrol boats, U.S. adding ships to Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet