Maritime law states that the vessel restricted in its movement has right of way. The trawler in the pic below isnt towing its nets. The SURTASS ship on the other hand has several thousand yards of array in the water.

Legally speaking anyone who thinks the Chinese have a leg to stand on here is probably Chinese and very optimistic!. What you actually see below would be termed attempted criminal damage if it was one trawler trying to wreck anothers nets. If there are any more photo’s in that sequence the USN probably has a decent case against that Chinese skipper.

And thats why the PLAN does not even want to talk to the Americans about ‘rules of the road’ since they know full well the Americans will only follow the letter of the law in order to breach its spirit in the most blatant and flagrant manner possible.

If you want to be padantic about it, next time the Chinese trawlers can throw some small nets out that will be just big enough to slightly impede the movement of the ship. Now both ships are ‘restricted’ in movement. Good luck trying to argue who has right of way then.

Hell, if the Chinese really want to get nasty, they can majorly re-inforce a heavy trawler or two and use them to drag ‘eel catching lines/nets’, steam behind the US ship and rip the entire TAS off.

If someone with a basic legal background can be bothered, I’m sure they can get a copy of the revelant maritime law codes and engineers a situation where that, or something along those lines is entirely within the letter of the law.

Talk legality or illegality is meaningless here. The very definitions of what can be done where are in dispute. As far as the Chinese are concerned, the USN were breaking the law and they had every right to chase them off.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7934138.stm

“China says that any intelligence data gathering by foreign governments within its EEZ is illegal – but the US does not agree with this”

I’m not sure if that’s true.
Can you provide a source?

You can’t prove a negative.

I have never seen anything on right of way at sea, and I highly doubt there is any such law. But I would be happy to be proven wrong and learn something new.

If I was the Captain of the USNS Impeccable I would have rammed the smaller vessel, claimed it was an accident and say something like “Hey, that’s the sort of thing that happens when you act recklessly at sea.”;)

Then don’t be surprised if something bigger, like a supertanker, ran the Impeccable over next time it goes anywhere near China and the Chinese read the Impeccable’s statement right back at you.

The Americans will spy, the Chinese will do their best to get in the way. But its in neither’s interest to take it to the next level and start trying to actually ram each other.

Personally I think the Chinese if they are bothered about a sonar elint vessel getting close they should sit by its SURTASS cable and BANG away with active sonar until they go away.

A fine way to stop yourself doing anything that involves the use of sonars. Even then I’m sure the likes of the BBC will run articles on how the PLAN is chasing unarmed US ships to disrupt their peaceful scientific research done for the benefit of all mankind. :rolleyes:

Here comes the Chinese flag waving team (who ironically don’t even live in China).
As expected, the replies are usually “hey lets ignore this incident and bring up another incident where the other side was wrong”.

sounds like every other hot button topic
Tibet – “hey lets ignore Tibet, and talk about European colonialism, those hypocrites”
or
Cheap knock offs “hey lets ignore Chinese cheap products and talk about Japan doing the same in the old days, you hypocrites”

More of the same old bile oozing BS from another troll. Congratulations, you have earned a place on my ignore list because it would just be a waste of my time to even read the trash you produce.

Happy trolling. :rolleyes:

I find this puzzling. I can believe that there are problems with it, but “doesn’t work and can’t be made to work” baffles me.

From what I understand, the issue is not that EMALS categorically can’t be made to work, but rather they can’t be made to work with the allocated budget. Which seems to be the primary beef the author of the original article has – that the contractor might have deliberately pitch an unrealistically low figure to get the navy to sign on, knowing full well that once the navy is fully committed, they can hike up the costs and the navy would have no choice but to cough up whatever they ask for (within reason of course).

As for what the articles says, well its a rebuke to the recent reported news of Russian allegations that the J11B is a copied flanker.

The article points out that the J11B is not a copy of anything, as it is a refinement of the original flanker design that China licensed built. Its based on the Flanker, but not a copy.

The article also raised some technnical points on the legal side to show that the J11B did not break any IP laws, and claims that is why Russia is merely stating the J11B is a copy and stopped short of calling it a violation of their IP.

This just goes to show that its exactly as I have been saying all along, and that the only reason the Russians brought up the J11B copying issue was so as to try and brand it as an inferior copy because deep down, they are worried about the possibility of having it competing with their own flanker derivatives on the international market. But then, thats what you would expect Xinhuan to say. :rolleyes:

A poor attempt to hide your own failings.

An internet translation tool will give you word for word translations, so there is no way you could have been given a translation that mentions anything about sales other then the fact that China first bought flankers from Russia.

You can’t hide the fact that you invented something based on nothing more then an unclear understanding and your own bias and then tried to pass that off as something a Xinhua article said.

As for people posting articles, get a grip. As I have pointed out before, if the subject is regarding a non-english speaking nation, then the bulk of the best sources are going to be non-english. That is a fact of life, so whining about it is not going to change reality.