JonesyHow do they ever find their bikes.:confused::D
From personal experience – often under the cars they routinely shoot out in front of!:mad:
JonesyHow do they ever find their bikes.:confused::D
From personal experience – often under the cars they routinely shoot out in front of!:mad:
JonesyDon,
The ADIZ issue is unnecessarily confusing and utterly unrelated to the EEZ issue.
Japans ADIZ is unilaterally claimed and has no basis in any international legal framework – a quick scan of a few blogs seems to indicate that the ADIZ is challenged frequently as well. Japans EEZ conforms to established convention and has the same restriction on the rights it enjoys in that zone as any other nation has in theirs.
The two zones could not be more different in nature.
Jonesy] provided they were not actually involved in direct combat operations, have full legal rights to transit.
IIRC, the PLAN warships sailed through the international channel in the Tsugaru Strait, en route to a joint exercise with the Russian Navy, and JMSDF P-3s tracked them.
BTW, local radio news just reported the Chicom coast guard is sending a ship to the islands that Philippines passed a law last week, and claimed as Filipino.
What is wrong with the JMSDF Orions tracking the Chinese vessels?. Same as if the Chinese vessels chose to have an ESM watch set and were closely recording bathymetric data and, perhaps, doing a little basic route survey work while they happened to be so close to Japanese waters. As long as the Chinese vessels had not committed a direct act of hostility it is hard to see a justification for Japanese military intervention – beyond, prudent, monitoring.
Transposing this to the SURTASS incident we see exactly identical patterns. China is well within her rights to monitor these US vessels – prudence demands as much. That stops way short of attempting criminal damage from enlisted civilian vessels tho!.
JonesyNaturally, the last time I read anything substantial about an EEZ was Operation Corporate, where Shars were tasked to, and did, shoot down unarmed Argentinean military transport planes near the Falklands, and the HMS Conqueror sank the General Belgrano that IIRC was departing the EEZ, which scared the 25 de Mayo back to her home port.
OTOH, I predict the 1.4 bil Chinese angry youths will be again disappointed because the Chicom coast guard or PLAN continues to not send anything to the DYT Islands (Diao Yu Tai Islands), which are owned by Taiwan, but administrated by Japan; no thanks to the cunning USA… although a few weeks ago, some PLAN warships sailed through the Tsugaru Strait between Hokkaidou and Honshuu, which is definitely Jap EEZ. XD
On the last point Don there is no issue in Chinese warships, or anyone elses for that matter, sailing through Japans EEZ. Japan has no more sovereignty in its EEZ than China does in hers and China’s warships, provided they were not actually involved in direct combat operations, have full legal rights to transit. The Tsugaru Strait is actually a great illustration of this as, owing to the narrowness of the straits, Japan has decreased its territorial limits to just 3 miles each side so that foreign vessels can pass without entering Japanese waters.
As to the Falklands I think you are confusing a Total Exclusion Zone or TEZ, which we established around the Falklands to control vessels within a specific radius, with an Exclusive Economic Zone or EEZ. There are no real similarities between the two – apart from the single letter transposition in the acronyms of course!.
JonesyI think you are trying to make this more cut and dried then it is.
Even the likes of the BBC, who has never been keen to side with China can’t find experts to say China is definitely in the wrong here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7941425.stm
The issue here is that the USNS ship was in the Chinese EEZ. While there are laws giving foreign ships certain rights within other country’s EEZs, spying is not one of them, and that is why the US has never stated the real purpose of the ship even though anyone with any insight will know exactly what its mission is.
You are allowed free passage through EEZs, but when the EEZ is used for spying, you go into a grey area because there is nothing to definitively state if its allowed or not, and it is up to interpretation.
It IS cut and dried. All you’ve got is that the BBC are unwilling to be as determined about the conclusion as I am?. What????
An EEZ is an Exclusive ECONOMIC Zone it does not refer to any other behaviour whatsoever….IIRC it doesnt even cover SOLAS – thats a seperate UN Convention.
Understand this – an EEZ is NOT Chinese waters. These are INTERNATIONAL waters that China has explicit, limited, rights to use for economical purposes. Thats it. Period. Endex. China has no rights here of any type outside of economical exploitation.
Is that now clear enough for you?.
The issue is not China trying to make EEZ territorial waters, its about China trying to limit foreign military activity within EEZs. When put like that, it doesn’t sound nearly as belligerent as your claims of Chinese intent make it sound does it?
So as you state above China is trying to assert territorial sovereignty in international waters?. That is its own condemnation really isnt it?.
While the above was a very well thought out theory, I have good reason to disagree with most of your findings. But that is too big and complex an issue to discuss here.
Agreed. The discussion was deliberately being kept at a simplistic level. The simple fact is that the spectre of unemployment is looming large for China today WITH its largest export market in place. In ordinary trading conditions the loss of that export market would be devastating, over the short-mid term, to the Chinese economy.
JonesyWarship missile system delayed
The Royal Navy’s new Type 45 destroyers will initially have to go to sea without their main anti-aircraft missile system, the National Audit Office warns on Friday, in the latest sign of strain in the government’s procurement process.
The programme for the six vessels is also running at least two years late and nearly £1.5bn ($2.1bn) over its original budget of £5bn.
The delays mean the Ministry of Defence will have to keep operating five ageing Type 42 destroyers, first designed during the cold war, at an estimated extra cost of £195m, says the report.
The Whitehall spending watchdog says at one stage during the procurement process, problems led to a breakdown in relations between the MoD and the original main contractor – formerly BAE Systems, now BVT Surface Fleet, a joint venture of BAE’s and VT Group’s shipbuilding operations. This eventually led to a contract renegotiation.
Type 45 destroyers are designed to protect the naval fleet, providing air defence and performing tasks such as supporting forces ashore.
The NAO goes on to warn that the decision to halve the original procurement from 12 to eight and finally to six destroyers means the MoD faces a challenge if it is to meet its policy requirement of always having five ships available for deployment at any one time.
The total cost of the programme is now estimated at £6.46bn – a 29 per cent increase.
Under the initial contract, the first ship was originally due to enter service in November 2007. That was renegotiated in 2007 and the MoD is now working towards a first entry into service of December 2009.
However, the ship, HMS Daring, will not get its main anti-air missile system until mid-2011, although the MoD believes it could be deployed if necessary. The report also notes that the department had always planned that several pieces of equipment would be installed incrementally once the ships are operational.
Despite its criticisms, the NAO acknowledges that since the renegotiation, “management of the project is now much improved” and no delays have been reported.
Although noting the programme was now running more smoothly, Edward Leigh, chairman of the public accounts committee, said there was a “familiar ring about a major MoD equipment procurement which begins with over-optimism about costs and timescales and commercial arrangements failing to reflect the risks, and ends with costs soaring, significant delays to delivery and ageing existing equipment having to be patched up until the new kit becomes operational”.
Quentin Davies, minister for defence equipment and support, said: “These are complex, sophisticated warships and where problems arose in the early stages MoD gripped the issue, renegotiated contracts where required and got the programme on track.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0b2941ea-0f5b-11de-ba10-0000779fd2ac.html?ftcamp=rss&nclick_check=1
Suprisingly poor journalism from the FT here. The contract problems are a direct result of the halving of the initial order and could not be considered a suprise to anyone?!. That issue is largely unrelated to the technical issues arising from the service introduction of the PAAMS(S) system.
PAAMS(S) has already been verified against altitude and seaskimming targets. The 2011 date is the expected culmination of the weapon system trials to get full-strength verified multitarget engagement. Truth is that development will carry on for years after that as different, new, capabilities are studied that the Sampson array can provide. Not such good journalistic impact from simply stating that ‘the new PAAMS(S) is proven operationally capable and is just 24 months from full systems availability’ I imagine. :rolleyes:
JonesyBut wouldn’t the Chinese people do better if they just leave the Americans off to starve itself and cook food just for themselves? Now instead, they’ve been funding these ridiculous American debt, part of which is obviously being used on a larger military budget this year. So, Chinese lending is actually helping the US military, think about things that way.
As an academic concept you may be right. In the real world shall I tell you the price of your proposal?. MASSIVE and I do mean MASSIVE unemployment and derivative social unrest in China. Chinese consumer demand will not catch up to the biggest consumer society on the planet for a generation and, perhaps, not even then seeings as a great proportion of Chinese society is unlikely to gain the disposable income to drive such consumerism.
The Chinese model only works by having a massive and extremely cheap labour force. Once that labour force really becomes aspirational, educated, and wants to start buying BMW’s the whole shooting-match starts to teeter on the brink. Wage pressures increase and competetiveness plummets – if you disagree have a look at the Chinese economy right now. Today the Yuan is very strong and, as a consequence, Chinese goods are no-longer quite as cheap as they were = exports down 25%. That is an artifical and, likely, temporary high as well caused by the finiancial crisis. Wait til that is a permanent high caused by escalating wage demands!.
well, I think part of the problem is not just the spying, but operating on China’s background. If you take a look at any Chinese map, they basically claimed the entire South China Sea as part of the boundary. When US surface force operates between Hainan and some of the disputed islands controlled by China, that in many ways reduces China’s claims to these islands.
This effectively validates YourFather’s earlier comment on the matter. Hard to see what they believe they can do to achieve this – if that is their underlying intent. The 12 mile territorial limit is pretty much universal and well codified. No-one has the slightest intent of trying to get that pushed out to 200 miles, even I suspect the Chinese, as the conflicts generated would be almost too complex to consider. China, for all of her burgeoning superpower status, isnt big enough to try and sway that one on her own and no-one will sit quiet while one nation, whoever it is, unilaterally extends territorial waters like this!.
Jonesyyou are forgetting that although China has not as much to contribute to USN other than maybe more transparency (although I doubt that will be enough), it has plenty of economic sway in the matter. That is unless you missed the trip that Hilary Clinton took to China a couple of weeks ago, where she basically got her two knees and begged China to lend more money to US. I’m sure SURTASS ship has been there for a long time and maybe China got aggressive much earlier than this, but I’m sure it’s not coincidental that this happens at a time when US needs China to send more money over to fund all those ridiculous rescue packages. I could go on with my economic theories, but I will just stop here.
If there is a more illusory factor in this than China’s supposed economic leverage over the US I have no idea what it is!.
If China likes exporting its industrial product to the US, and the quarter trillion dollar trade surplus that exists in its favour, then I’d suggest that turning the screw on the US and further putting the skids under the economy of all those lovely consumers would be extraordinarily unwise!. Wasnt there a 25% drop in exports recorded for China just last month?. I saw a piece on the BBC that stated China needed to maintain 8% growth just for the graduates its universities are turning out to be able to find employment?.
China is definitely in a position to tear the US a new backside economically. The victory would be a hollow one though.
And honestly, I think China could’ve done other things to make life annoying for the SURTASS ships. I think on SDF, they brought up the idea of surrounding the ship with really noise ships, basically things that will make the throw off the accoustic data that these ships can collect. They certainly have enough fishing ships to do that.
This is the obvious factor I am amazed that has taken this long for the Chinese side, on here, to come up with. When you know someone is analysing and watching you show them what they expect to see!. Whether this is a stealth fighter with RF enhancers or a missile boat with some of its accoustic insulation compromised while you know SURTASS is in the area. You take away the advantage the enemy will get from his surveillance and he’ll stop wasting resources on that surveillance.
Problem for the Chinese is that, whilst it knows about SURTASS, it won’t know where and when there are US SSN’s around who’s data will be used to validate SURTASS. Move and counter move….the way the game has ever been played.
One thing is for certain though – the kind of clumsy and unsophisticated attempts to interfere with SURTASS as demonstrated in this incident will achieve nothing beneficial to PLAN ops.
JonesyWhether the action is wrong or not is subjective though Quickie. In international waters you do not have the right to take action solely on the grounds that something exists you do not like. It has to be unlawful for any action to be warranted and nothing the US is doing breaks any recognised maritime law.
It may be a matter of ‘life and death’ one day. Simple fact is though there is no tangible and direct threat of harm or destruction to any Chinese person or item of property from that ship steaming 75nm offshore.
Pinko,
You may want to revisit what you have posted there regarding Article 56. That article places obligation on the coastal nation in regards to commercial activity. What you have done here is to identify the article that those Chinese ‘civilian trawlers’ were in breach of!.
JonesyAgain guys there seems to be an idea that there is something here that China could negotiate or generate policy on to keep this sort of intelligence gathering from happening.
Understand that this is not the situation. These are not Chinese territorial waters and China has no authority to enforce any action in them against a vessel not directly undertaking hostile action against China or her interests. Understand, also, that intel gathering, unlike mine laying, does not constitute a hostile act as inherently intel gathering carries no threat in and of itself.
The only way that China will stop the actions of the USN is by agreement to do so with the US. Interference in the manner shown with a civillian vessel will bring US charges on SOLAS grounds. Interference with military vessels will see SURTASS ships escorted and a much greater USN presence with much more surveillance on Chinese military assets…..a spectacular own-goal.
Learn to live with this one lads….its a pretty much no-win situation.
JonesyQuite the reverse – let them come along, let them shout, let them wave their banners….let the Security Service see who they are. Lets find out who they associate with and where they go.
This is still a free and open society. They have a right to protest and voice their opinions. We have a duty to protect our society and the general populace, Muslims included, this way both aims are satisfied simultaneously!.
JonesyQuite the reverse – let them come along, let them shout, let them wave their banners….let the Security Service see who they are. Lets find out who they associate with and where they go.
This is still a free and open society. They have a right to protest and voice their opinions. We have a duty to protect our society and the general populace, Muslims included, this way both aims are satisfied simultaneously!.
JonesyWell, I would have to do a little research. Yet, I would be surprised if the AIM-9G was nearly as good as a AIM-9L. Even from the rear aspect…….:confused:
Doesnt make any difference Scoots, as Russell says, virtually all shots taken were inside the 9 Golf envelope. The 9L’s helped and were very welcome (and got some bloody good advertising courtesy of the Fleet Air Arm!) but the air battle would have been won without them.
JonesyI’ve been reading this argument all day and I’m not sure it works. Just because US and Soviets agreed to a protocol in cold war, that doesn’t mean China has to agree to the same one. US and Soviet could spy off each other’s coast, but China obviously doesn’t have that capability.
In the long run, they need to figure out a protocol for this. That’s what the direct military line should be for.
As for the interpretation of UNCLOS, I’m sure if we get a lawyer in here, he/she can probably smack all of us down with arguments.
I think the issue you may be missing is that China isnt in a position to do anything legitimate about this because the USN is doing nothing illegal for China to intercede against. A clever lawyer could try and make an argument but there is plenty of legal precedent and it is very clear where, and what, motive and intent would be behind any ‘unfortunate’ collision here. Unfortunately, for the PRC, this sort of incident phtographed builds towards the body of evidence in favour of the USN – if they, PLAN, are smart they’ll knock it on the head at the rush.
If it were a trivial issue this aggressive stance on China’s part wouldn’t be occurring so just ‘talking this one away’ is not going to happen. SURTASS is accoustically profiling everything that visits that base and is, likely, generating invaluable tactical data. The USN will not put that on the table without something significant to trade off for.
So the question would have to be what would the USN’s interest be in developing the kind of protocol that you describe?. When China puts a few SURTASS ships 75 miles off San Diego maybe there is a trade. Until then China’s position doesn’t appear strong?.
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