View of Spratly Islands. Photo: US Navy handout via Reuters
Word of US intelligence report comes after assessment that equipment was installed on the contested Spratly islands earlier this year
As the US and China plunge into a trade war, Beijing is apparently preparing for a different type of warfare that some fear may be on the horizon. Continue reading
In the future, power projection via drones will not be limited to Asia or the Asia-Pacific, but the Western Pacific on America’s doorstep — if not pushing through.
You will advance against my people Israel like a cloud that covers the land. In days to come, Gog, I will bring you against my land, so that the nations may know me when I am proved holy through you before their eyes. – Ezekiel 38:16
An unmanned drone aircraft is tested during a campaign for disaster prevention and reduction in Beijing / Getty Images
DOD predicts China will produce tens of thousands of drones by 2023
A new report reveals how the Chinese military uses unmanned drones as a means of power projection and surveillance in the hotly contested South and East China Seas.
The report, released Monday by the Project 2049 Institute, offers “a field guide to Chinese UAVs/UCAVs operating in the disputed East and South China Seas.” Continue reading
When all is said and done, and war breaks out, China will be able to mobilize over 172,000 civilian vessels for war (See also HERE and HERE). If the Russians are capable of loading freight vessels with cruise missile launchers disguised as shipping containers, it couldn’t be hard to imagine their Chinese partners being capable of the same.
Manila (AFP) – China is using its fishing fleets with armed escorts to bolster maritime claims in disputed territory, a senior US State Department official warned Wednesday, calling China’s behaviour “disturbing”.
The comments came after Indonesian warships fired warning shots and detained a Chinese-flagged fishing boat and seven crew near the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea last week, in actions slammed by Beijing. Continue reading
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines plans to relocate major air force and navy camps to a former U.S. naval base northwest of Manila to gain faster access to waters being contested by China in the South China Sea, according to the country’s defense chief and a confidential government report.
Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said Sunday that as soon as relocation funds are available the government plans to transfer air force and naval forces and their fleets of aircraft and warships to Subic Bay, which has become a busy free port since the 1992 departure of the U.S. Navy.
“It’s for the protection of our West Philippine Sea,” Gazmin said from South Korea, where he was on a visit, using the name adopted by the Philippine government for the disputed South China Sea. Continue reading
Despite commentary that China and the United States are moving closer together, the opposite is the case. In fact, China is mounting a direct, if subtle, challenge to the international order the United States created in the Far East after World War II. Most are aware that China is attempting to leverage growing military strength into a larger, dominating position by laying claims to islands in the East and South China Seas. Few realize that China is attempting to overturn the legal underpinnings of the US position in the western Pacific.
Like the Chinese proverb “to point at the mulberry tree to curse the locust tree”, Beijing’s challenge to Japan’s sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands is in fact a bid to abolish the entire structure of Far Eastern international relations established by the San Francisco Treaty of September 1951. (The Chinese refer to the Senkakus as Dyiaoyutai, literally a “fishing platform”, but in recent months Beijing has taken to calling Dyiaoyutai the Dyiaoyu Islands to add legal heft to the dispute.) Continue reading
BEIJING (AP) — China’s increasingly powerful navy paid a symbolic visit to the country’s southernmost territorial claim deep in the South China Sea this week as part of military drills in the disputed Spratly Islands involving amphibious landings and aircraft.
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The four-ship task force is headed next to the Pacific Ocean for deep-sea exercises via the Bashi Channel separating Taiwan and the Philippines, Xinhua said. Continue reading
“Anyone with clear eyes saw long ago that behind these drills is reflected a mentality that will lead the South China Sea issue down a fork in the road towards military confrontation and resolution through armed force,” the People’s Liberation Army newspaper said, according to a Reuters report.
Full article: China’s Military Paper Warns US Of Armed Conflict Over Sea Dispute (International Business Times)
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