FONOPs

Two U.S. warships sail in disputed South China Sea

By Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military said two of its warships sailed near islands claimed by China in the South China Sea on Monday, a move that angered Beijing at a time of tense ties between the world’s two biggest economies.
The busy waterway is one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a trade war, U.S. sanctions and Taiwan.
President Donald Trump dramatically increased pressure on China to reach a trade deal by threatening to hike U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods this week and soon target hundreds of billions more.
The U.S. guided-missile destroyers Preble and Chung Hoon traveled within 12 nautical miles of Gaven and Johnson Reefs in the Spratly Islands, a U.S. military spokesman told Reuters.
Commander Clay Doss, a spokesman for the Seventh Fleet, said the “innocent passage” aimed “to challenge excessive maritime claims and preserve access to the waterways as governed by international law”.
The operation was first reported by Reuters.

The U.S. military has a long-standing position that its operations are carried out throughout the world, including areas claimed by allies, and that they are separate from political considerations.
The operation was the latest attempt to counter what Washington sees as Beijing’s efforts to limit freedom of navigation in the strategic waters, where Chinese, Japanese and some Southeast Asian navies operate.
China claims almost all of the strategic South China Sea and frequently lambasts the United States and its allies over naval operations near Chinese-occupied islands.
Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have competing claims in the region.
China and the United States have repeatedly traded barbs in the past over what Washington says is Beijing’s militarization of the South China Sea by building military installations on artificial islands and reefs.
China defends its construction as necessary for self-defense and says the United States is responsible for ratcheting up tension in the region by sending warships and military planes close to islands Beijing claims.
The freedom of navigation operation comes weeks after a major naval parade marking 70 years since the founding of the Chinese navy. 

The United States sent only a low-level delegation to the Chinese navy anniversary events.

Chinese Aggressions

US warship sails by contested island chain in South China Sea in message to Beijing
By Lucas Tomlinson

A U.S. warship sailed Sunday near two contested Chinese man-made islands in the South China Sea, the location where Beijing has built up military fortifications despite a pledge not to do so, a U.S. defense official told Fox News.
The “guided-missile destroyer USS Decatur (DDG 73) conducted a freedom of navigation operation in the South China Sea to uphold the rights and freedoms of all states under international law. Decatur sailed within 12 nautical miles of Gaven and Johnson Reefs in the Spratly Islands,” the U.S. official, who declined to be identified, said in a statement.
It’s not immediately clear how Beijing will respond. 

Normally, American warships have been shadowed by Chinese spy ships during similar operations in the past in addition to fighter jets.
The latest military operation -- which the Pentagon calls “routine” freedom of navigation maneuvers -- comes days after a series of actions between global powers.
The U.S. military last sailed a warship within 12 nautical miles of a contested Chinese island in May, the internationally recognized territorial boundary. 

By sailing a warship inside that boundary, the U.S. rejects the claim, a view shared by most of the international community. 

The news of the action was also reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. military last sailed a warship within 12 nautical miles of a contested Chinese island in May, the internationally recognized territorial boundary. 

The transit by the American destroyer Sunday follows a series of diplomatic standoffs between world powers.
Last week, China announced it would not allow a large U.S. warship to visit Hong Kong next month. On Wednesday, the U.S. Air Force flew nuclear-capable bombers near China in the East China Sea, which Beijing called “provocative” despite flying in international airspace. 

China also yanked its top admiral from Newport, R.I., last week days before he was set to meet his American counterpart.
Recent tensions come as the Trump administration has slapped additional sanctions on $200 billion in Chinese goods in recent days and taken the additional steps to sanction China over its purchase of Russian fighter jets and advanced surface-to-air missiles.
Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis played down the recent disputes with China.
“It's international waters, folks. It's international waters,” Mattis said about the B-52 bomber flight and other recent “freedom of navigation operations” by other U.S. warships.

“If it was 20 years ago and they had not militarized those features there, it would've just been another bomber on its way to Diego Garcia or whatever, Mattis added. 

 “There's nothing out of the ordinary about it.”
In the Rose Garden outside the White House in 2015, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping pledged his country would not militarize the man-made islands Beijing had built atop former reefs. 

Since then, China has deployed surface-to-air missiles to some of the islands, a move which U.S. officials concede could one day affect U.S. military flight plans.
At the United Nations last week, President Trump accused China of meddling in the upcoming midterm elections in November.
“They do not want me or us to win because I am the first president ever to challenge China on trade. We are winning on trade. We are winning at every level,” Trump said at a U.N. Security Council meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi seated nearby.

China's new unnamed home-built aircraft carrier leaves Dalian in northeast China's Liaoning Province for sea trials Sunday, May 13, 2018. 

In his annual address to the U.N. General Assembly, President Trump said China's trade policies "cannot be tolerated" anymore.
“We have racked up $13 trillion in trade deficits over the last two decades, but those days are over. We will no longer tolerate such abuse, we will not allow our workers to be victimized, our companies to be cheated and our wealth to be plundered and transferred.”
Two years ago, the U.S. military accused their Chinese counterparts of stealing two American underwater drones in the South China Sea as the U.S. Navy operated them from a short distance away. 

The Chinese returned the drones weeks later in boxes.

Chinese Aggressions

What Makes China's Fake Islands so Dangerous

By Kyle Mizokami

In recent years the People’s Republic of China has laid claim to ninety percent of the South China Sea, buttressing this claim by creating artificial islands with dredging equipment. 

These claims run roughshod over Beijing’s neighbors, which have competing claims. 

The discovery in 2016 that China had militarized these artificial islands was not exactly surprising, but just how useful are these islands in defense of China’s strategic goals?
China’s campaign to militarize the South China Sea began in 2009, when it submitted a new map to the United Nations showing the now-infamous “Nine-Dash Line”—a series of boundary dashes over the South China Sea that it claimed demarcated Chinese territory. 

Since then, China has expanded at least seven reefs and islets in the sea with sand dredged from the ocean floor, including Subi Reef, Mischief Reef, Johnson Reef, Hughes Reef, Gaven Reef, Fiery Cross Reef and Cuarteron Reef.
According to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative [3], Beijing has created more 3,200 acres of new land. 

China initially claimed its “territory” was being developed for peaceful purposes, from aid to mariners to scientific research, yet many of the islands now feature military-length airfields, antiaircraft and antimissile guns [4], and naval guns. 

Cuarteron Reef now has a new High Frequency early-warning radar facility [5] for detecting incoming aircraft, a development difficult to square with a peaceful mission. 

Farther north, but still in disputed territory, China has installed HQ-9 long-range surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island.
On the face of it, China’s territorial grab and apparent turn away from former leader Hu Jintao’s concept of “peaceful rise” is hard to understand. 

It has alienated China’s neighbors and drawn in other powers, including the United States, India and Japan. 

One theory is that the country’s leadership may have calculated that securing a bastion for China’s sea-based nuclear deterrent may be worth the diplomatic fallout it created.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s ballistic-missile submarines operated from two protective “bastions,” on the Atlantic side in the Barents Sea, and on the Pacific side in the Sea of Okhotsk. There, Soviet missile submarines could be covered by land-based air and naval forces to them from enemy aircraft, ships and attack submarines.
China’s nuclear “dyad” of land- and sea-based missiles relies in part on four Jin-class ballistic-missile submarines. 

China believes American ballistic-missile defenses threaten to undermine the credibility of its modest nuclear deterrent. 

In the Chinese view, this makes a protective bastion even more important.
The country’s geography leaves it with basically one ocean, the Pacific, for its own bastion. 

The Northern Pacific, with the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet and the nearly fifty destroyers of the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force, is a no-go. 

The South China Sea, on the other hand, is bordered by a number of relatively weak states that could not pose a threat to China’s nuclear-missile submarines.
Sailing ships and flying aircraft through the South China Sea is one thing, but a permanent presence on the ground solidifies China’s hold on the region. 

It also allows, as the case of the HF radar on Cuarteron Reef demonstrates, the installation of a permanent sensor network.
The ports and airfields under construction will almost certainly grow to defend the region, with help from the mainland, from a complex antisubmarine warfare campaign designed to go after China’s seagoing nuclear weapons.
More surface-to-air missile batteries such as the HQ-9 and land-based antiship missiles are likely, if only to protect other military installations such as airfields and radar systems. 

Recent freedom-of-navigation operations by the United States and its allies will be used as a justification for heavier defenses. 

To paraphrase an old saying about bureaucracy, the military presence is growing to meet the needs of the growing military presence.
This points to the Achilles’ heel of China’s island garrisons: in the long run, they are impossible to defend. 

Unlike ships, the islands are fixed in place and will never move. 

Small islands cannot stockpile enough troops, surface-to-air missiles, food, water and electrical capacity to remain viable defensive outposts. 

As Iwo Jima and Okinawa demonstrated, there is no viable defense in depth for islands even miles across.
In any military confrontation with the United States, China’s at-sea outposts would almost certainly be quickly rolled back by waves of airstrikes and cruise missile attacks, devastating People’s Liberation Army facilities and stranding the personnel manning them. 

How China would respond to such an attack on its nuclear bastion is an open question that should be given serious consideration, as victory in the South China Sea may not herald the end of a campaign but a dangerous new turn in the war itself.
China’s military outposts in the South China Sea are a breach of Beijing’s agreement to not militarize the sea. 

Although the region itself has great strategic value, they are a poor defensive solution, prone to rapid destruction in wartime. 

China would be wise to consider the islands only as a temporary solution, until the People’s Liberation Army Navy has enough hulls to maintain a permanent presence in the region.

Chinese aggressions in South China Sea: What's at stake

• China has been fortifying disputed islands in the South China Sea
• Secretary of state Rex Tillerson has said China's island-building must stop

By Katie Hunt

Secretary of state Rex Tillerson: "China's island-building must stop"

Rex Tillerson, who was sworn in as US Secretary of State Wednesday, takes responsibility for US policy in one of the world's biggest flashpoints: the South China Sea.
President Donald Trump says the former Exxon CEO will bring "a clear-eyed focus to foreign affairs."
He'll need it.
The contested waters are a crucial shipping route and home a messy territorial dispute that pits multiple countries against each other.
Tensions have ratcheted up since 2014 as China has turned sandbars into islands, equipping them with airfields, ports and weapons systems and warned US warships and aircraft to stay away from them.
The Trump administration looks set to take a much more confrontational stance toward China than its predecessor.
During his confirmation hearing, Tillerson said China should be blocked from accessing the artificial islands it's built, setting the stage for a potential showdown.
Here's what's at stake:

Who claims what?

China bases its claims on the fictitious "nine-dash line" -- its claimed territorial waters that extend hundreds of miles to the south and east of its island province of Hainan, abut its neighbors' claims and, in some cases, encroach upon them.
The Paracel Islands (Hoàng Sa) have been controlled by China since 1974, but they are also claimed by Vietnam.

Tensions flared in 2014 when China installed exploratory oil rigs in the vicinity.

The situation is more complicated in the Spratlys (Truong Sa).
The archipelago consists of 100 smalls islands and reefs of which 45 are occupied by China, Malaysia, Vietnam or the Philippines.
All of the islands are claimed by China and Vietnam, while some of them (or nearby waters) are claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

What's China been building?
In early 2014, China quietly began massive dredging operations centering on the six reefs it controls in the Spratly Islands -- Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef, Mischief Reef, Cuarteron Reef, Gaven Reef and Hughes Reef.
According to the US, China has reclaimed more than 3,000 acres since the beginning of 2014.
On his 2015 trip to Washington, Xi Jinping said China wouldn't militarize the islands, but a December report from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) said China had installed comprehensive weapons systems on seven reefs that include anti-aircraft guns.
Some have called the islands China's "unsinkable aircraft carriers."
Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines have also reclaimed land in the South China Sea, but their land grab -- the US says approximately 100 acres over 45 years -- is dwarfed by China's massive, recent buildup.

This composite image shows Chinese weapon installation on Gaven reef.
What's the US view?
It could be changing.
The US has traditionally taken no position on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea but has repeatedly asserted its right to freedom of navigation in the disputed waters, with the US military flying and sailing its assets close to the islands China controls.
Tillerson and Trump have not minced their words on the issue, suggesting that the State Department could take a more muscular approach.
"Building islands and then putting military assets on those islands is akin to Russia's taking of Crimea. Its taking of territory that others lay claim to," Tillerson said in his confirmation hearing.
"We're going to have to send China a clear signal that first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands also not going to be allowed."
Blocking Chinese naval vessels from accessing South China Sea reefs would almost certainly trigger a US-China clash, says Ashley Townshend, a research fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

What could China do?
As China stretches its muscles as a growing superpower, the South China Sea, rich in oil and gas reserves, has become a testing ground for whether the country will rise as part of the existing international order or outside it.
China says both the Paracels and the Spratlys are an "integral part" of its territory, offering up maps that date back to 1947.
It has repeatedly defended its right to build both civil and defensive facilities on the islands it controls. 

In December, a Chinese warship unlawfully seized an underwater drone from a US oceanographic vessel.
One new strategy could be to declare an air defense zone in the South China Sea, which would require all aircraft to file flight plans even if they don't enter Chinese airspace.
Beijing has also ignored a landmark ruling last year by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which said there was no legal basis for China's maritime claims.
Even though they now have international law on their side, other claimants have done little to challenge Beijing. 

The Philippines, which originally brought the case, has pivoted towards Beijing under President Rodrigo Duterte.
Beijing's response to Tillerson and Trump's comments to date has been fairly muted, but some analysts think Beijing could soon test the new US commander in chief.

Chinese Aggressions

CHINA’S NEW SPRATLY ISLANDS DEFENSES
Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative

China appears to have built significant point-defense capabilities, in the form of large anti-aircraft guns and probable close-in weapons systems (CIWS), at each of its outposts in the Spratly Islands. AMTI began tracking the construction of identical, hexagon-shaped structures at Fiery Cross, Mischief, and Subi Reefs in June and July. 

It now seems that these structures are an evolution of point-defense fortifications already constructed at China’s smaller facilities on Gaven, Hughes, Johnson, and Cuarteron Reefs.

Gaven Reef






Hughes Reef





China has built nearly identical headquarters buildings at each of its four smaller artificial islands. The two smallest of the islets, Hughes and Gaven Reefs, feature four arms built off of these central structures. 

The end of each of these arms sports a hexagonal platform, approximately 30 feet wide. 

The northeastern and southwestern arms host what are most likely anti-aircraft guns (roughly 20 feet long when measured to the tip of the barrel). 

The other two platforms hold smaller (roughly 10-foot-wide) objects without clearly visible barrels. These cannot be definitively identified, but are likely CIWS to protect against cruise missile strikes, according to the Center for Naval Analyses’ Admiral Michael McDevitt (Ret.) and RAND’s Cortez Cooper in a new podcast.

Johnson Reef




China modified this blueprint for its facility on Johnson Reef. 

There the central facility has only two arms, with the southern one sporting the same anti-aircraft gun (which is covered by a tarp in recent imagery but was previously visible) and the northern one an apparent CIWS. 

Another gun and probable CIWS, along with a radar, were constructed on a separate structure, consisting of three hexagonal towers on the eastern side of the artificial island. 

This structure seems to be a less complex precursor to those built more recently at Fiery Cross, Mischief, and Subi Reefs.

Cuarteron Reef



At Cuarteron Reef, the last of the four smaller artificial islands completed, the point-defense systems have been completely separated from the central headquarters building. 

The northeastern and southwestern ends of the islet each host a structure identical to the one built at Johnson, including an anti-aircraft gun, probable CIWS, and radar.
This model has gone through another evolution at China’s much-larger bases on Fiery Cross, Subi, and Mischief Reefs. 

Each of these sports four structures, consisting of tiered hexagonal towers oriented toward the sea. They are positioned so that any anti-aircraft guns and CIWS installations placed on them would cover all approaches to the base with overlapping fields of fire. 

Earlier AMTI imagery of the construction of these buildings showed that each included six hexagonal structures in a ring around a central tower. 

Since then, three of the outer hexagons have been buried, while the others have been built in a tiered pattern, with those in the front (facing outward), built lower than those behind. 

All of the structures except one at Fiery Cross are also backed by an even taller tower consisting of several terraces. 

These towers likely contain targeting radar and other systems necessary for the operation of advanced point defenses. 

The structure at Fiery Cross lacking this tower is built alongside the base’s runway and may be connected to radar and communications systems at the airport.

Fiery Cross Reef





Construction of all four structures has been completed at Fiery Cross Reef, where covers have been placed over the point defenses installed on the central hexagonal tower and the two in front of it. 

But the size of the platforms (which matches those at the four smaller artificial islands) and covers suggests they boast systems similar to those at Gaven, Hughes, Johnson, and Cuarteron Reefs.

Mischief Reef





At Mischief Reef, two of the four structures have been completed, with covers already placed over the systems installed there. 

Two others are still being finished, with disturbed soil showing where the three buried chambers were placed. 

One of those has covers over the front two platforms, while the other has space for a system that has not been installed yet. 

All three platforms at the fourth structure are empty, but it is clear from the spaces left empty on the platforms that the systems to be installed on the front two will be smaller than the one placed on the central platform. 

This is consistent with the pattern of larger anti-aircraft guns and probable CIWS seen on the smaller islets.

Subi Reef





At Subi Reef, only one of the four structures seems to have its point defenses already installed, while the others sport empty spaces waiting for guns.
These gun and probable CIWS emplacements show that Beijing is serious about defense of its artificial islands in case of an armed contingency in the South China Sea. 

Among other things, they would be the last line of defense against cruise missiles launched by the United States or others against these soon-to-be-operational air bases. 

They would back up the defensive umbrella provided by a future deployment to the Spratlys of mobile surface-to-air missile (SAM) platforms, such as the HQ-9 deployed to Woody Island in the Paracel Islands. 

Such a deployment could happen at any time, and Fox News has reported that components for SAM systems have been spotted at the southeastern Chinese port of Jieyang, possibly destined for the South China Sea.