Tiger,

A country’s territorial waters extend 12 miles. In those waters that nation can dictate as it pleases. Outside that is international waters and, whatever indignation a country feels, it has no rights to interfere with free passage of any vessel in those waters.

Article 78 above clearly dismisses any notion of the extension of territorial limits, in terms of sea and airspaces, over extended continental shelving so thats out as a technicality.

In short if the USN so wanted those photo’s offer sufficient detail to instigate proceedings against that Chinese trawler skipper. If the skipper were to make a statement to the effect that he was acting on instructions from the PRC govt. then that body would have to answer charges.

So still decent in your moral standard.

If you want to be nasty enough to sniff/peep/ into others’ secrets, and acting in harassing way itself, why be bothered himself being harassed in another way around?

You are quoting moral standards to me when you are defending clear breaches of maritime law?

Steaming 75 miles off the coast in international waters is harassing?. The PLAN may not like what the USN is doing. Just as we didnt like Sov AGI’s off Faslane in the bad old days but its nothing new and you dont deal with it like this!

Commonly called ‘assault’ and illegal in most civilised nations Pinko!

Except such a conflict is unlikely in the extreme and even if it was likely the need to UK involvement would be minimal. Again, the 1998 SDR: There is no conventional threat to the UK.

SL you are not this naieve so your need to have a clear ‘enemy’ underscored and bolded can only be an attempt at a joke surely?.

The purpose of strong multirole capability is not just to warfight. It is principally to declare national intent to undertake warfighting if anyone chooses to act against us. The key lesson from 1982 was precisely that the law of unintended consequence is operative at national level as much as anywhere else.

Nott, in his ignorance, came up with a beautifully logical and, probably, carefully thought out plan to orient HM forces against their most significant threat. In your terms he chose to spend the resources where they would do the most good against the highest likely action we would have to engage in. Intellectually, after the wastage of the mid-late 70’s, you may try and say he was right to do what he did. He is also the man who, personally, I feel is most directly responsible for the Falklands War. Nott has blood on his hands from his idiocy and myopia.

Only if you are ignorant, or a politician trying to finesse a way out of defence expenditure, can you fail to be aware of the multitude of small scale conflicts that are coming as various nations compete for resources in contested maritime environments. They will in some cases be reruns of the ‘Cod War’ but in other cases we will be facing off against combattant forces of other naval services. Either way, to some extent, we will be engaged in supporting our national policies in far flung areas and we need to display the resolve to others that we are quite capable of defending any legitimate claim or policy that we are tasked to.

You can live happily quoting ‘Nott’s Logic’ as much as you wish. Myself I’m quite happy to see the carriers ordered and look forward to going to watch the launch!.

The mans a cartoon genius,its just hard to find his material on the web as he often takes action on sites hosting his work.Shame but you can see his point.
Try a Larson to this…

That would have to be something like:

“Knowing hangars are very shy when giving birth, Norma had the kids look the other way!”

now theres a larsons fan…lol

I got a ‘Far Side’ calender for christmas 2006. I giggled nearly every morning of 2007 sometimes with tears. Wife has banned all Far Side material from the house – I get illicit fixes whenever she’s not looking! 🙂

Perched precariously on the nose gear Bill, the co-pilot, admits he really, really has to sneeze…!

Not really that relevent Skips. Opposums GRANBY deployment predated Spartan/DDS by a good few years.

Waiting weeks for an SSK to get out to the oparea or hoping you have one in the locale with a tender in support, when needed, isn’t a sensible or cost effective option and one, happily, we dont have to try and support anymore.

The idea of patrolling in a potential opponents littoral when his SSK drivers have local knowledge and more experience of their environment is the very height of stupidity. There really are better was of doing SF insertion and opposition-littoral ASW than SSK’s.