Posted on 04/29/2020 11:29:35 AM PDT by RomanSoldier19
A US Navy guided-missile destroyer sailed through waters near the Paracel islands in the South China Sea challenging China's claim to the area, the Navy said Wednesday.
The USS Barry undertook the so-called "freedom of navigation operation" on Tuesday, a week after Beijing upped its claims to the region by designating an official administrative district for the islands.
The US sought to assert the "rights, freedoms and lawful uses of the sea recognized in international law," the Navy said in a statement.
"Unlawful and sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea pose an unprecedented threat to the freedom of the seas, including the freedoms of navigation and overflight and the right of innocent passage of all ships," it said.
The move came amid a rise in US-China tensions over the novel coronavirus epidemic, in which Washington has accused Beijing of hiding and downplaying the initial outbreak in December and January in the Chinese city of Wuhan
(Excerpt) Read more at ibtimes.com ...
https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2020/04/28/Chinese-military-expels-USS-Barry-from-Paracel-Islands/9411588107562/
How long do we let those islands exist?
Don’t think they quite the “expel” part done.
Apparently done by a Captain who was not worried about Covid-19 or politics aboard his ship.
I don’t think a single destroyer scares anyone....
Per the article
“It also announced official Chinese names for 80 islands and other geographical features in the South China Sea, including reefs, seamounts, shoals and ridges, 55 of them submerged in water.”
Yeah, that was on Russia Today also.
It's the unseen underwater vessels accompanying the destroyer that scares the chinese.
Wait for the first serious typhoon and those ‘islands’ are gone. I wonder if Dick Cheyney’s weather machine is in storage somewhere?
Well you don’t have your carrier walk point.
Zing, take that you yellow bellied crybabies in the Pentagon crying over the ship Captain that had his wings clipped for egregiously violating the UMCJ so willingly and so recklessly.
A single destroyer has 90 Vertical Launch tubes. And I doubt they are without an attack sub nearby, with another dozen VLS tubes. Not to mention anti-ship torpedoes.
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