Free Republic

As if poking the Russian bear wasn’t enough, the Obama administration has now chosen to rile the Chinese dragon. In a move meant to project U.S. military power to the Chinese government, American officials announced that U.S. Navy warships will sail directly through a Chinese claimed 12-nautical mile zone in the disputed region of the South China Sea. The contested waters around the Spratly Islands, which China claims as its own sovereign territory, have been the cause of intense controversy. The U.S. has refused to recognize China’s territorial claims and believes the disputed area resides in international waters. Last month,...

While the geopolitical posturing between the US and China over the South China Seas is nothing new, the latest and most dramatic installment started just one month ago, when as part of its celebration to commemorate the successful victory over Japan in World War II, China sailed five warships to the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska, just as Obama was quite literally taking selfies of himself a few hundred miles away. ... China's response was quick, clear and unequivocal: "We will never allow any country to violate China's territorial waters and airspace in the Spratly Islands, in the...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Friday it was "extremely concerned" about a suggestion from a top U.S. commander that U.S. ships and aircraft should challenge China's claims in the South China Sea by patrolling close to artificial islands it has built. China's increasingly assertive action to back up its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea have included land reclamation and the construction of ports and air facilities on several reefs in the Spratly Islands. The work has rattled China's neighbors, in particular U.S. ally the Philippines, and raised concern in the United States. China says it has irrefutable...

(Poster's note: I searched by title and keyword and didn't find this already on FR) A pilot from New York believes he has found the wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airline Flight 370 off the coast of Thailand after searching thousands of satellite images online. Michael Hoebel, 60, spent hours trawling through the images made available to the public on a crowd-sourcing website, TomNod.com, before coming across what he believes is the doomed plane. The recreational pilot from Tonawanda said he was shocked to discover that the aircraft, which vanished two months ago, appeared to be in one piece beneath...

British woman Katherine Tee is saying she spotted what she believes is the missing Malaysian Air flight MH370 while she was sailing. She saw in early March, but is only now coming forward because she did not believe her eyes at the time. Tee said that while she and her husband Marc Horn were sailing across the Indian Ocean from India to Thailand, she spotted what looked like a plane on fire during the night of March 7. She thought she was hallucinating, but after the media coverage, she looked up the flight plan of the aircraft and discovered their...

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was "highly likely" on autopilot when it ran out of fuel and crashed into the Indian Ocean, Australian researchers have said. A new search area for the missing Boeing 777 plane has been announced by the Australian government .... Deputy Prime Minister Warren Trust confirmed the search will move further south to an area 1,800km (1,100 miles) off the western coast of Australia.... An expert group has reviewed the existing information on MH370, revealing that is it probable that the plane was on autopilot when it ended its flight. Truss said it was "highly, highly likely...

A second senior airline industry source has revealed his belief that there is some sort of conspiracy behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. As The Herald Sun reports, Emirates president and CEO Sir Tim Clark made world headlines in October when he revealed his doubts about the fate of the missing plane, which disappeared early in the morning of March 8 this year. Now a second senior airline industry source has voiced his doubts about the fate of the plane, with the even wilder claim that the Boeing 777 may have been shot down by US military personnel...

The four acoustic pings at the center of the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 for the past seven weeks are no longer believed to have come from the plane's black boxes, a U.S. Navy official told CNN. The acknowledgment came Wednesday as searchers wrapped up the first phase of their effort, having scanned 329 square miles of southern Indian Ocean floor without finding any wreckage from the Boeing 777-200. Authorities now almost universally believe the pings did not come from the onboard data or cockpit voice recorders, but instead came from some other man-made source unrelated to the jetliner...

Audio recordings of the 'ping' signals believed to have come from the black box of Flight MH370 will now not be released as doubt grows over whether they are connected with the missing plane. The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) headed by Angus Houston told the Herald Sun that the search group's original confidence the four accoustic 'ping' signals were from the plane had waned and the recordings would not be made public. The decision is a blow to the families of some of the MH370 passengers who issued a plea earlier this month to make the recordings public. A...

Searchers Focus on April 5 Signals as Confidence Fades Over April 8 Detections Searchers preparing to resume the underwater hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 increasingly suspect that some of the electronic signals detected last month didn't come from the jetliner's black-box flight recorders, a senior Australian naval officer said. The doubts—based on further acoustic analysis of the transmissions by Australian authorities over recent weeks—represent another potential setback in the two-month-old operation. An initial underwater search in the southern Indian Ocean has already failed to find any sign of the missing plane, while a costly air-and-ship search of the ocean's...

Apparent airplane debris found off the coast of Reunion island, a French department in the western Indian Ocean, is being examined to see if it is connected to the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a member of the French Air Force in Reunion said Wednesday. The debris was found off the coast of St. Andre, a community on the island, according to Adjutant Christian Retournat. “It is way too soon to say whether or not it is MH370. We just found the debris this morning,” Retournat said. He said the debris — what appears to be a wing...

A French aviation expert believes he may have found the wreckage of MH370 – the Malaysia Airlines flight which disappeared off the coast of Malaysia in March 2014. Xavier Tytelman, a former military pilot who now specialises in aviation security, was contacted on Wednesday morning by a man living on the island of Reunion, in the Indian Ocean. The man sent Mr Tytelman a series of photos showing wreckage of a plane, which the Frenchman said could possibly be the missing jet. "I've been studying hundreds of photos and speaking to colleagues," Mr Tytelman told The Telegraph. "And we all...

France's air crash investigation agency is studying a piece of plane debris found on Reunion Island off the east coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean for possible links to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a spokesman said on Wednesday. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters the part was almost certainly from a Boeing 777 but that it had not yet been established if it came from MH370. A U.S. official said air safety investigators had a "high degree of confidence" the debris was from the same model as MH370, the Associated Press reported. No trace has been...

MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT MH370 MISSING 36m Editor's note: Numerous tweets are noting the discovery of airline debris off the coast of La Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean and speculating about a possible link to the missing Malaysia jet MH370. Jon Ostrower, the Wall Street Journal’s aerospace reporter, says the debris appears to be an airline flap. - Tom The airline debris found on Reunion Island was discovered on the coast of St. Andrew by trail maintenance workers - @clicanoore read more on clicanoo.re MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT MH370 MISSING 9m Local report: Investigators say the debris found on Réunion Island...

Air safety investigators have a "high degree of confidence" that aircraft debris found in the Indian Ocean is of a wing component unique to the Boeing 777, the same model as the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared last year, a U.S. official said Wednesday. Related Stories US official: Debris in photo belongs to Boeing 777 Associated Press Searcher says wing find won't change MH370 seabed search Associated Press Australia Official: Too Early to Say If Plane Debris from MH370 The Wall Street Journal Authorities study plane debris found off Madagascar for links to missing MH370 Reuters Investigators believe debris found...

Runway could be used for military purposes, US think tank says Johnson South Reef features a small port and two helipads. China has nearly finished building an airstrip that could be used for military purposes on one of its biggest artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea, according to satellite images released by a US think tank yesterday. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said images taken on June 28 by DigitalGlobe showed China had almost completed the construction of a 3,000-metre airstrip at Fiery Cross Reef, which China calls Yongshu Reef. The defence ministry refused to...

China has vowed to never back down from its aggressive territorial expansion into the South China Sea because it would shame their ancestors. What their ancestors would say about angering all their neighbors by building fake islands in the middle of the ocean is still unknown. China is locked in territorial conflicts with the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, and Malaysia over what amounts to $5 trillion dollars a year in shipping lanes. And sharing does not seem to be an option.

Washington’s failure in recent years to keep careful watch over what goods are made where — especially when it comes to such vital items as electronics and drugs — means the United States now depends far more on China than vice versa. Back in the 1990s, advocates of liberalizing U.S. trade with China said economic interdependence would inevitably lead to peaceful coexistence. But one-sided dependencies invite adventurism, as China’s growing belligerence today proves. Washington must now address the fundamental flaws in the international trade system that gave China such a big advantage. The White House claims the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership...

Last April, Chinese airplane manufacturer Shenyang Aircraft Corporation surprised military observers by test flying its new J-11D fighter jet, an upgraded version of the J-11, China’s indigenous copy of the Russian Su-27. The D-model J-11 is believed to include such advanced features as an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, a relocated infrared search and track (IRST) system, and the expanded use of composite materials to reduce the plane’s weight and radar signature. This first flight indicates that the J-11D is further along in its development cycle than many experts predicted and is poised to provide a new and deadly...

A Chinese admiral said on Sunday that Beijing could set up an air defense zone above disputed areas of the South China Sea if it felt it was facing a large enough threat, according to Chinese news media. Adm. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army, told a regional security forum in Singapore that China had not said it would defintely create a so-called air defense identification zone, but that any decision would be based on an aerial threat assessment and the general security situation. He also said other nations should not overemphasize the issue.