Posted on 12/18/2016 7:24:08 AM PST by traumer
BEIJING — Only a day before a small Chinese boat sidled up to a United States Navy research vessel in waters off the Philippines and audaciously seized an underwater drone from American sailors, the commander of United States military operations in the region told an audience in Australia that America had a winning military formula.
“Capability times resolve times signaling equals deterrence,” Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. told a blue-chip crowd of diplomats and analysts at the prestigious Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, the leading city in America’s closest ally in the region.
In the eyes of America’s friends in Asia, the brazen maneuver to launch an operation against an American Navy vessel in international waters in the South China Sea about 50 miles from the Philippines, another close American ally, has raised questions about one of the admiral’s crucial words. It was also seen by some as a taunt to President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has challenged the One China policy on Taiwan and has vowed to deal forcefully with Beijing in trade and other issues.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They were let to steal it.
Trump is no idiot.
Hans Brix send them nasty retter.
“They were let to steal it.
Trump is no idiot”
Well, we agree on the second statement, at least.
And which was more effecting. The Obama admin’s “demarche” or Trump’s Tweet (on top of his other Tweets), suggesting that things just aren’t going to continue going the way they are going.
Is it possible it was a trap? A bait?
A commercial drone with no real intel value...
Interesting.
How did the Chinese know it wouldn’t explode?
May the NYT hasn’t been paying attention...
“another close American ally (Philippines)”
Paper of record my a$$.
5.56mm
Muted?
Obama was very unmuted in blaming Trump for it due to his comments on China and Taiwan and and Obama was very unmuted in stating the Chinese Communist position, essentially justifying the ChiCom action for them.
“Because the Chinese will not treat that the way they will treat some other issues. They won’t even treat it the way they treat issues around the South China Sea, where we have had a lot of tensions. This goes to the core of how they see themselves and their reaction on this issue could end up being very significant.”
“China says it will give drone back, but Trump says ‘keep it’....I don’t understand his logic (?)”
The Chi-Coms will return it after they’ve obtained all the data they can from it, and have copied its internals so they can reverse engineer it. In that case, why would we want it back? Especially since the Chi-Coms probably installed some malware in it.
The Chinese grabbed a Kongsberg-built “Seaglider”.
The Seaglider is an unclassified commercial glider used for gathering oceanographic data on water conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD), oxygen concentration, and chlorophyll fluorescence data.
It is for sale to anyone, for about $150,000:
Send the Chinese a bill if they want to keep it.
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