Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, the commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, speaks to the media on the USS Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered super carrier, in the Pacific Ocean, south of Tokyo, Japan, November 24, 2015. REUTERS/TIM KELLY/FILES
Reuters: U.S. admiral warns against Chinese fighter flights from South China Sea runways
Any move by China to fly jet fighters from runways on its new man-made islands in the disputed South China Sea would be destablising and would not deter U.S. flights over the area, a senior U.S. naval officer said on Monday.
Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, the commander of the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet, also urged Beijing to be more open over its intentions in the South China Sea, saying it would relieve "some of the angst we are now seeing".
"We are unsure where they are taking us," Aucoin said of China's recent moves during briefing with journalists in Singapore.
"So we are going to sail, fly, operate throughout these waters....like we have been doing for so long," he said.
That, he added, included "flying over that airspace."
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Update: US wants China to clarify its S China Sea intentions (Today Online)
WNU Editor: China's possible use of fighter jets from these man-made islands is not the only thing on the U.S. Admiral's mind .... U.S. Concerned by China Using Non-Navy Boats in South China Sea (Bloomberg). As to the Chinese response to these warnings .... they are not listening.
9 comments:
The US is concerned when its sovereignty of any part of the land or sea on earth is questioned, even remote places like Afghanistan and the South China Sea. So in this case, the US Navy has to make a big deal of island developments by China, which by the way is not the only country developing islands. But China is a designated US enemy so it gets special attention. China, for its part, has a boomer (nuclear submarine) facility on Hainan Island which abuts the SCS, a fact which probably hasn't escaped US attention.
SecDef Carter has previously demanded that all nations stop developing SCS islands, without result. Additional US warnings will receive similar reactions, which means the US is simply going to end up looking stupid, yet again.
Don Bacon,
Have you been to the South China Sea? I have.
It is not remote. Traversing it is a regular part of some people's jobs and we are not talking military vessels.
Any one base in the South China Sea is not a threat by itself.
China is merely following its chain or line of pearls strategy and the strategy of 3 lines of defense (defense in depth) same as the Japanese did in WW2.
@AS
My reference to remote is relative to the US. The SCS is remote to the US, but not to China. Why should Americans care about the SCS? They don't. This exercise is simply a way to provoke China, which does have a major interest in the area.
Don,
Tell that to all the commercial ships and planes that pass though.
I have passed that way on a commercial ship myself.
Is Vietnam, Malaysia and The Phillipines all in the back pocket of the U.S.?
I don't think so.
The U.S. is nowhere near Germany. In fact Germany is closer to Russia. So should America defer to Russia?
""We are unsure where they are taking us," Aucoin said of China's recent moves during briefing with journalists in Singapore."
For a ride my camo friend, for a ride.
So true James ... so true.
"Western memory tends to be short-lived and highly selective, and Western society rarely recalls that troops from several Occidental nations and Japan once occupied China's cities, while U.S. warships, patrolled China's rivers. We may have forgotten these events, but the Chinese have not; the national collective memory of the "century of shame" is never far from the surface in that country's dealings with foreign nations." --Naval History Magazine - February 2000 here
So what the USNavy considers a normal boys' game of who is the Alpha Male in the neighborhood, China takes much more seriously since it has been trampled upon before.
"U.S. Navy Commander Of The Seventh Fleet Warns Against Chinese Fighter Flights From South China Sea Runways"
Not Vietnam, only China.
So the China may seriously consider something it may not have thought of, i.e. flying jets off one or two runways. And what would Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin do about that?
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