MC2 Sean Furey, US Navy The littoral combat ship USS Freedom at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, earlier this month.

TOKYO – The U.S. pivot toward Asia – and the potential for confrontation with China – became a little more real this week with the arrival of a new class of warship designed to fight in coastal waters.

The USS Freedom crossed into the Western Pacific Wednesday on its way to Singapore, where it will be deployed for the next eight months. Eventually, up to four of the new Littoral Combat Ships will operate continuously out of Singapore’s Changi Naval Base, close to some of the most hotly contested waters in the world.

China claims territory and resources over nearly all the South China Sea and is engaged in a tense standoff with Japan over uninhabited islands in the nearby East China Sea. Worries over China’s growing military capabilities and territorial ambitions are largely behind U.S. plans to build up, or “rebalance,” military forces in the region.

So far, little has moved beyond the planning stages. The Marines have boosted manpower in Okinawa from about 10,000 to 18,000, but that’s basically a return to pre-Iraq and pre-Afghanistan levels. About 200 Marines were sent to Australia for six months last year and a similar contingent will return this spring – symbolically important, perhaps, but negligible in terms of combat power.