blue-water

[bloo-waw-ter, -wot-er]

adjective

1. designed to operate on and range over the open sea; oceangoing.

   a bluewater navy that can be dispatched throughout the world, far from its home base.

Word History and Origins

Origin of blue-water¹

First recorded in 1900–05

Example Sentences

The Chinese navy now has more ships than ours, giving Beijing a blue-water capability with bases stretching from its artificial and now militarized islands in the South China Sea to Pakistan to Djibouti,” Amb.

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The People’s Liberation Army Navy “has evolved from a coastal force to a blue-water navy signifying its ambition for global power projection,” the report said.

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“This one gesture has made a joke of both the government’s climate emergency and its will to be taken seriously by a country that has an expanding blue-water navy in our backyard.”

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The new missile is only one piece in a rapidly expanding arsenal that Beijing is deploying as it militarizes more of the South China Sea, builds out its blue-water fleet, expands its footprint in the Pacific Islands, and engages in the largest nuclear buildup since the Cold War.

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Its northern island commands the Luzon Strait between the Philippines and Taiwan, a channel for Chinese fleets into blue-water Pacific.

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