You only have a few options at this point.

1. Do nothing.

2. Start the dredging of your own shoals with heavy fortifications.

3.Move Heavy tactical assets to the Philippines. Land launced TLAMs land based Aegis. F-35Bs. Hold all there new islands at threat.

4. Move a mobile sea base platform into the region.

5. Use Taiwan or the Philippines as a bargain chip. IE. Taiwan will get F-35s if you start dredging.

6. Do nothing.

None of those options will be able to physically stop China from dredging up Scarborough Shoal if they really wanted to — because to physically stop China from doing so would require the use of physical force and effectively would amount to a declaration of war.

The US can deploy their entire pacific fleet into the SCS loaded with tomahawks, F-35s and super hornets all directed at the islands, but unless they’re willing to actually fire them, there’s not too much they can do to stop the dredging of new islands or to force China to vacate from its currently reclaimed islands.

The reclaimed islands themselves are fundamentally vulnerable even if they were fully stocked with SAMs and tactical fighters, and in a high intensity war against a capable enemy they would be sitting ducks.
But it is their peacetime presence and ability to deploy surveillance aircraft and to use them as listening posts which is most important, and their ability to cooperate with Chinese Navy surface and air forces in the SCS during peacetime to enhance situational awareness of the SCS is also very important.

BS.
Russia sell too all countries in Asia.
PAK, India, china etc

Hmm, how much do you think Russia values its relationship with China?

With sea levels rising daily I wonder how long these Chinese man-made islands will remain above water? Did China factor climate change and rising sea levels into their SCS strategy? Or have they overreached in their attempts to establish hegemony over this body of water? One good storm could erase all of China’s hard work in an afternoon. These (below) and other Chinese journals are beginning to sound the alarm about rising sea levels in the South China sea.

http://www2.ouc.edu.cn/xbywb/english/index.asp

http://www.jto.ac.cn/CN/volumn/current.shtml

It is helpful to recall that these bases China has established are built on atolls and sandbars that are merely a few inches or feet above sea level at high tide.

I’ve considered that too — but during construction there were some photos that emerged and it looks like there’s over a meter’s additional buffer space from where high tide would be, which is more than enough to account for expected 2100 sea levels which has been estimated to rise between 18-59 cm. To be honest I think it would have been immensely stupid of them to have constructed this thing if they did not consider possibilities like the rise of sea levels or storms — or yes, high tide >_>
[And of course they can also conduct further reclamation activities in due time to compensate for any rise in sea level as well — I have a feeling they can dredge faster than the sea can rise]

It’s also important to remember that what they’ve built there is actually far more structurally sound than a lot of the other small outposts other nations have in the SCS, therefore if there is a storm big enough to wipe out China’s reclaimed islands, then it will probably be big enough to wipe out every other outpost of every single player in the SCS (Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan etc), and would likely do a lot of damage to regional SCS nations as well.

And the islands themselves probably won’t help in establishing hegemony of any sort, that would be virtually inevitable during peacetime with the larger presence of the Chinese Navy’s ships in SCS to begin with. What the islands will be able to do is help provide a greater presence for protecting China’s territorial claims in the overall larger territorial dispute mess in the SCS.

http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/imp_navigator/17993765/539831/539831_original.jpg

China has landed civilian aircraft on this huge artificial -island.

Not strictly Navy related — I think the Navy’s role is mostly providing security for the airspace and the waters around the island and also to maintain a permament presence in SCS in general.

Its open source that the Chinese are playing with water fog for optical/IR screening….

Wait, what? I wasn’t aware of this.

I mean, it makes sense and would be well within their capabilities, but I do not recall any specific articles or rumours explicitly stating it.

A significant moment for china’s aviation industry, WS10 engine is finally moving ahead towards equiping single engine J10:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]241342[/ATTACH]

It is indeed significant.

Though I’d like to wait until we see many more J-10s equipped with WS-10s to acknowledge the milestone.

Take your point Blitzo but its still factoring down as, at best, 3 deployable at any given time perhaps with another working-up/at x days readiness….and that best part of a decade away. Until then……???

Well, the IN are obviously still developing their surface combatant escort fleet, and while having only 3 true air defence destroyers for the entire navy is not optimal, it’s better than what they had (or rather didn’t have) prior to the P15As entering service.

That said, I can’t help but wonder whether it would have been better for the IN to induct a larger number of capable escort ships prior to commissioning their new carrier, rather than inducting both the carrier and the first escorts at almost the same time period.

The debate over SAM density has gone on a very long time and I imagine wont be resolved any time soon. There is a school of thought that says a multi-dozen saturation antiship missile attack is practically so hard to coordinate, within a realtime targeting window, that a ship doesnt need an extremely large SAM arsenal. In reality there will never be enough confirmable targets presenting themselves to require hundreds of missiles to shoot back at them.

Then there is the further argument that a competent attacker, one possessed of a large enough AShM inventory to mount streaming/saturation attacks, would not expose its launch platforms to an opposing naval area SAM MEZ and, therefore, cheaper SHORADS ‘missile-soak’ defence is the optimum. This is especially the case when there is organic Fleet Air Defence from a carrier, on call to the group, to ‘shoot the archer not the arrows’.

If those arguments hold merit then the modest SAM battery is fine and the design decision to proritise multirole over mission specificity is more valid. People point to the fact that no Sea Dart shooter, in the one ‘modern’ high intensity sea-air battle we’ve seen, fully depleted its initial wartime onload of missiles to support this assertion. Myself I’m not convinced either and tend to agree with you that a few more would be prudent…even if it were at the expense of other systems…where those systems are duplicated on other ship classes.

Yes, it is possible that IN isn’t as worried about facing opponents of the highest calibre that are able to conduct very organized saturation attacks. Pakistan might have that capability to a small degree but they’re hardly at Russian Naval Aviation or Chinese Naval Aviation levels, and I suppose an IN CSG could do quite well with two P15A/Bs as the main air defence shield in most engagements that the IN may be looking to operate against near its home turf.

Obviously if the IN were looking to operate independently in the western pacific against the full capability of the Chinese Navy, Air Force, and 2nd Artillery then their air defence ships would likely require much heavier air defence, but I don’t think that’ll be on the cards in the foreseeable future… and Chinese naval forces in the Indian Ocean likely won’t have the ability to conduct large saturation attacks for at least the next decade or so, at least until they get a fully operational carrier, as well as many more 052Ds in service along with 055s.