USNS Impeccable

[JALU3]

I am surprised no one has posted this yet.

From AP via FoxNews

WASHINGTON -- The White House said Monday that U.S. Navy ships will continue to operate in the South China Sea, where five Chinese vessels shadowed and maneuvered dangerously close to a Navy surveillance ship, prompting an American protest.
"We're going to continue to operate in those international waters, and we expect the Chinese to observe international law around that," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said during a Monday press conference.
Gibbs said U.S. officials had "protested the actions of the Chinese ships." A formal protest was relayed to the Chinese government from the U.S. embassy in Beijing and it was to be repeated to a Beijing military attache at a Pentagon meeting Monday.

This occured at about the same distance from Hainan Island, within international waters which the 2001 Hainan Island Incident occured. Lets home they don't decide to start ramming ships to the point where the have to go to the nearest port.

[geetrue]

I am surprised the Commander in Chief has ordered us out of the area ...

At first I didnt see how the Impeccable could be a spy ship with only one surface search radar, no tacan, no ECM or ECCM antenna and then CNN just said it was a special sonar platform to track submarines.

I sure would like to spend a week-end on her

[JALU3]

China says activity by US ship illegal
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN – 23 minutes ago
BEIJING (AP) — A U.S. Navy mapping ship confronted by Chinese vessels in the South China Sea over the weekend was operating illegally, China's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday, in its first formal comment on the latest friction between the two militaries.
Responding to U.S. accusations that Chinese boats operated recklessly and without cause, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said the claims were wrong.
"The U.S. claim is totally inaccurate and confuses right and wrong and is unacceptable to China," Ma said at a regularly scheduled news conference.
The ship, the USNS Impeccable, "broke international and Chinese laws in the South China Sea without China's permission," Ma said.
The U.S. Defense Department says Chinese ships surrounded and harassed the Navy vessel in international waters Sunday, at one point coming within 25 feet (8 meters) of the American boat and strewing debris in its path.
The episode, the latest in a series of confrontations between U.S. surveillance craft and Chinese coastal defenses, took place in international waters in the South China Sea, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Hainan Island.

Source


So is this just a continuation of them claiming the entire South China Sea as their own territory? Not that they have't made that claim before, however now they have some military might to back it with. I wonder, if the are successful in doing so how that'll effect international shipping and air routing. So when are they going to make their claim on the entireity of the Spratley and Parcel Island Groups and all the possible gas and oil deposits which are under it.

[geetrue]

The episode, took place in international waters in the South China Sea, about 75 miles south of Hainan Island.

Seventy-five miles?

But then again I have often thought we should claim all of the Gulf of Alaska sharing it only with Canada.

[Kaye T. Bai]

This whole thing reminds me of the 2008 incident between the U.S. Navy and the Iranian "maritime force."

This was posted on the other forum but I'll post it here.

Here is something somebody said on an Iranian "news" website. It is paraphrased, but the main message is still there.

"All armchair warriors think the U.S. Navy is the most powerful Navy. The truth is that China and Russia are unstoppable. Russia and China are easily capable of sinking all ships in the U.S. Navy, at a fraction of the cost. They are at least two generations ahead of the U.S. in missile technology and they intend to easily destroy the U.S. Navy. When the time comes, they will do it."

What do you guys think about the above statement? I personally think it's ridiculous and absurd.

[JALU3]

China may up patrols amid South China Sea disputes

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN – 49 minutes ago
BEIJING (AP) — China plans to boost patrols in the South China Sea to deal with the growing threat of illegal fishing and sharpening territorial disputes, a Chinese official was quoted as saying by state media Thursday.
The report in the China Daily newspaper follows China's dispatch last week of a converted naval vessel to patrol fishing grounds surrounding the disputed Paracel Islands, about 400 miles (640 kilometers) south of Hong Kong.
Fisheries department director Wu Zhuang was quoted as saying that additional patrols were needed to handle new "challenges and complications" in overseeing the 1.16 million square miles (3 million square kilometers) of ocean China claims in the South China Sea.
"Faced with a growing amount of illegal fishing and other countries' unfounded territorial claims of islands ... it has become necessary to step up the fishery administration's patrols to protect China's rights and interests," Wu said.
Last week's dispatch of the converted naval vessel China Yuzheng 311 was given unusually heavy coverage in Chinese media, an apparent high-profile response to reassertions of sovereignty claims to islands in the area by the Philippines and Malaysia, two of the six nations that say all or some of the South China Sea archipelagos belong to them.
That also followed a confrontation between a U.S. Navy survey vessel and Chinese boats earlier this month about 75 miles (120 miles) off China's southern island province of Hainan, in which the U.S. boat said it was harassed, threatened, and its way blocked by a pair of Chinese-flagged fishing trawlers.

AP News Source

Is this a continuation of the test it has been making of the new Administration, or is this unrelated and a continuation and extention of its claims on the South China Sea as its own?

Related News:
China continues military growth at double digit pace.

[JALU3]

Found at CNN.com

Originally Posted by CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sailors aboard a U.S. ocean surveillance ship reacted with a mix of bemusement and profanity to what they said was harassment by Chinese ships earlier this month, according to video released Friday by the Pentagon.
The Navy says this shows a trawler crew member using a hook to try to snag the Impeccable's towed acoustic array.

"Chinese aggression, from aboard the USNS Impeccable," one member of the American ship's crew is heard narrating. "Details at 11."
The Pentagon has raised concerns about a March 8 incident in which "increasingly aggressive" Chinese ships harassed the Impeccable, an unarmed survey ship with a mostly civilian crew.
China's government accused the ship of violating Chinese and international laws during its patrols, which took place more than 100 miles off the Chinese coast.
"The U.S. claims are gravely in contravention of the facts and confuse black and white and they are totally unacceptable to China," Ma Zhaoxu, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said after news of the incident emerged.
Five Chinese vessels shadowed the Impeccable, with two of them closing to within 25 feet while their crews waved Chinese flags and stripped down to their underwear in a sign of disrespect. The Impeccable also turned fire hoses on one of the ships "in order to protect itself," the Pentagon said.

The Pentagon said the Chinese also attempted to snag the sonar equipment that the ship was towing behind it, leaving crew members discussing possible orders to destroy the equipment at one point.
"Lou and Wilson man the hoses while the Chinese irritate us to tears," the video's narrator reports. "Here he comes for another swipe at the array cable."
The 281.5-foot Impeccable is one of six surveillance ships that perform military survey operations, according to the Navy. It is an oceanographic ship that gathers underwater acoustic data, using sonar.

It has a maximum speed of 13 knots -- or about 15 mph -- but it travels 3 knots, or 3.5 mph, when towing its array of monitoring equipment. It carries a crew of 20 mariners, five technicians and as many as 20 Navy personnel.
The Chinese ships involved included a navy intelligence collection ship, a Bureau of Maritime Fisheries patrol vessel, a State Oceanographic Administration patrol vessel and two small Chinese-flagged trawlers, the statement said.

News Story Source

[fatty]

Thought you guys might appreciate this commentary on the ambitions of China's maritime jurisdiction:

Commander James Kraska's article provides an accurate description of the various legal views surrounding the maritime incident between China and the United States involving USNS Impeccable, with a necessary focus on the very fanciful nature of China's legal argument.

The article also underlines this action is but one of a series of "special" Chinese maritime legal stands, of which the most egregious is her "special economic zone." As the diagram below shows, this represents an EEZ that goes beyond the mandated 200 miles to actually stretch some 900 miles from her coastline. It also attempts to take from Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Japan their more modest EEZs to achieve this. Separately, I have suggested this is the equivalent of Canada unilaterally extending her Atlantic EEZ 900 miles down to Florida


As Commander Kraska points out, the Chinese claim is often based on their military clinging to rocks which in no way satisfies the UNCLOS requirement of being able to sustain human habitation, as the photos below make clear. The requirement for the claiming state to have exercised continuous administration over them is also overlooked.

[ASW Jedi]

Originally Posted by geetrue

I am surprised the Commander in Chief has ordered us out of the area ...

At first I didnt see how the Impeccable could be a spy ship with only one surface search radar, no tacan, no ECM or ECCM antenna and then CNN just said it was a special sonar platform to track submarines.

I sure would like to spend a week-end on her

Trust me its not all its cracked up to be. Up until a month ago I was one of the civilian technicians onboard those ships. Its pretty surreal having a cookout with PRC ships following us around

[JALU3]

CNN

Sub collides with sonar array towed by U.S. Navy ship

updated 5:22 p.m. EDT, Fri June 12, 2009

From Barbara Starr
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In what a U.S. military official calls an "inadvertent encounter," a Chinese submarine hit an underwater sonar array being towed by the destroyer USS John McCain on Thursday.

The array was damaged, but the sub and the ship did not collide, the official said. A sonar array is a device towed behind a ship that listens and locates underwater sounds.

The incident occurred near Subic Bay off the coast of the Philippines.

The official, who declined to be named because the incident had not been made public, would not say whether the U.S. ship knew the submarine was that close to it.

Having family that comes from Subic Bay, It would be a bad thing to have a Support Activity open up again, especially with a more active PLAN in the area.