China claims virtually the entire area and has created an entirely new city to administer it, sparking deep concern from rival claimants. The sea hosts about a third of the world's cargo traffic, has rich fishing grounds and is believed to store vast oil and gas reserves."............
Give the crew safe passage home (after a thurough “medical exam” to include the what, why, and how) and then strip down the vessel like the ChiComs did the US plane years ago.
You can return any junk you want after that. I hear most of it is “Made in China” anyway. (From US ideas and patents, however).
Sounds like a sitting duck situation to me.
The Phillippine Navy whould board it, take possession of it, then tow it to the nearest port and turn it into a museum.
The Phillippine government should sieze it and trade it to North Korea for USS Pueblo.
Is there some part of journalist training where they are taught to deliberately mis-label warships, especially in headlines.
Usually it’s calling everything a “battleship” but this time it’s calling a frigate a “Gunboat.”
That’s why they call it “Mischief Reef”.
Couldn’t they afford to put a foward scaning and side scaning Sonars on the ship? Really, my guess is they were making a “hero run”, running fast at night with all Sonar and Radar off trying to be undetected and relying only on GPS and charts that hadn’t been updated..... and they stuffed it! Did somebody screw with the GPS signal?
Exclusive economic zones are not the same as territorial waters. Foreign ships, even warships, still have free passage through them. Now whether this shoal is part of the Philipines or not and therefore extends the territorial waters is another question.
The Philippines isn’t in a position to push the Chinese around.
A few well placed rounds or torpedoes should eliminate any need for salvage operations.
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.