Posted on 07/13/2012 4:53:45 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
This is a superb opportunity for a media circus to embarrass the Chinese. They should load up ships with international media people (asking them to bring their own GPS with them) but providing them with live satellite video feeds, then make it a point to loudly ask the Chinese warship if it needs assistance, such as a tow, food or water.
The warship will almost certainly refuse, while screaming for help from the Chinese navy. But when they arrive, greet them with Philippine navy warships as “escorts into Philippine waters for a *humanitarian* rescue mission of a Chinese warship that has “navigational” problems, in that it is clearly in Philippine waters, and run aground.”
All while on live satellite feed to everywhere.
The Chinese ships Captain and his staff will probably be executed for embarrassing the Chinese navy, and efforts to bluff and bluster and declare that sea as Chinese waters will just be laughed at.
It’s Typhoon season out east and the Philippines is always a target. One passed over the Philippines on 29 June. Nothing new has formed yet but who knows what the next couple of weeks will bring.
If they don’t get the ship off the reef soon she will be broken up or sunk!
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/category/winds-of-change/typhoons/
They’re in the frigate section of Jane’s, and the Office of Naval Intelligence counts them as frigates.
They’re old, and not very good, frigates, but they are frigates.
As much as this is an enjoyable “Ha Ha!” moment, it’s actually LESS embarassing than putting an Aegis cruiser on a reef right off of Honolulu, resulting in damage so bad the ship is decommissioned, which we did three years ago.
As recently as fewer than five years ago, you've had US warships colliding with, among other things, fishing boats, rocky outposts and bridges.
Again, the Philippine navy is such a joke that simply having their ships displayed next to Chinese ones would make them a laughingstock. They don’t even have any anti-ship or anti-air missiles (or launchers) in their inventory - the heaviest weapons their ships carry are 76mm guns.
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