As the Chinese militia fleet around Whitsun reached its peak size last month, the U.S. fleet concentrated its ships that were already underway in the western Pacific. The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and the assault ship USS Makin Island joined up in early April, combining their air wings and their escorting cruisers, destroyers and submarines. “The signal is unambiguously clear to somebody amidst the Whitsun Reef saga,” quipped Dr. Collin Koh, a Research Fellow at the RSIS.