SUBIC WELCOMES U.S. SUBMARINE USS LOUISVILLE

 

U.S. SUBMARINE. The U.S. Navy submarine USS Louisville (SSN 724), with over a hundred officers and men, has docked for a week-long visit at the Alava Pier here in the Subic Bay Freeport, Subic Bay, PH, a former U.S. Navy base, then the biggest outside the U.S. mainland.

Olongapo City and Freeport locators and residents welcome the submarine’s port call because of the economic activity it will generate with various supplies and services it will require and source locally, as in the heydays of the U.S. Military Bases’ presence in the country until 1992 when the PH senate voted to abrogate the RP-US Military Bases Agreement that used to allow the U.S. to maintain military bases in the country.

In the national and international level, the U.S. Naval vessels’ presence in Subic and the West Philippines Sea (South China Sea) is taken as an indication of the United State’s readiness to come to the aid of the Philippines which is presently in a heated territorial dispute with China over Panatag (Scarborough) Shoals and the Spratleys.

On May this year, the U.S. Submarine USS Carolina docked in Subic for a week, drawing negative reactions from some quarters in the country that subsequent scheduled port calls of two more U.S. submarines, the USS Tucson and USS Columbus, were cancelled in a matter of weeks, resulting to multi-million losses in business opportunities, according to local businessmen and residents. SBN/VVV