Posted on 12/13/2013 2:57:59 AM PST by markomalley
A Chinese naval vessel tried to force a U.S. guided missile warship to stop in international waters recently, causing a tense military standoff in the latest case of Chinese maritime harassment, according to defense officials.
The guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens, which recently took part in disaster relief operations in the Philippines, was confronted by Chinese warships in the South China Sea near Beijing’s new aircraft carrier Liaoning, according to officials familiar with the incident.
“On December 5th, while lawfully operating in international waters in the South China Sea, USS Cowpens and a PLA Navy vessel had an encounter that required maneuvering to avoid a collision,” a Navy official said.
“This incident underscores the need to ensure the highest standards of professional seamanship, including communications between vessels, to mitigate the risk of an unintended incident or mishap.”
A State Department official said the U.S. government issued protests to China in both Washington and Beijing in both diplomatic and military channels.
The Cowpens was conducting surveillance of the Liaoning at the time. The carrier had recently sailed from the port of Qingdao on the northern Chinese coast into the South China Sea.
According to the officials, the run-in began after a Chinese navy vessel sent a hailing warning and ordered the Cowpens to stop. The cruiser continued on its course and refused the order because it was operating in international waters.
Then a Chinese tank landing ship sailed in front of the Cowpens and stopped, forcing the Cowpens to abruptly change course in what the officials said was a dangerous maneuver.
According to the officials, the Cowpens was conducting a routine operation done to exercise its freedom of navigation near the Chinese carrier when the incident occurred about a week ago.
The encounter was the type of incident that senior Pentagon officials recently warned could take place as a result of heightened tensions in the region over China’s declaration of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently called China’s new air defense zone destabilizing and said it increased the risk of a military “miscalculation.”
China’s military forces in recent days have dispatched Su-30 and J-11 fighter jets, as well as KJ-2000 airborne warning and control aircraft, to the zone to monitor the airspace that is used frequently by U.S. and Japanese military surveillance aircraft.
The United States has said it does not recognize China’s ADIZ, as has Japan’s government.
Two U.S. B-52 bombers flew through the air zone last month but were not shadowed by Chinese interceptor jets.
Chinese naval and air forces also have been pressing Japan in the East China Sea over Tokyo’s purchase a year ago of several uninhabited Senkaku Islands located north of Taiwan and south of Okinawa.
China is claiming the islands, which it calls the Diaoyu. They are believed to contain large undersea reserves of natural gas and oil.
The Liaoning, China’s first carrier that was refitted from an old Soviet carrier, and four warships recently conducted their first training maneuvers in the South China Sea. The carrier recently docked at the Chinese naval port of Hainan on the South China Sea.
Defense officials have said China’s imposition of the ADIZ is aimed primarily at curbing surveillance flights in the zone, which China’s military regards as a threat to its military secrets.
The U.S. military conducts surveillance flights with EP-3 aircraft and long-range RQ-4 Global Hawk drones.
In addition to the Liaoning, Chinese warships in the flotilla include two missile destroyers, the Shenyang and the Shijiazhuang, and two missile frigates, the Yantai and the Weifang.
Rick Fisher, a China military affairs expert, said it is likely that the Chinese deliberately staged the incident as part of a strategy of pressuring the United States.
“They can afford to lose an LST [landing ship] as they have about 27 of them, but they are also usually armed with one or more twin 37 millimeter cannons, which at close range could heavily damage a lightly armored U.S. Navy destroyer,” said Fisher, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
Most Chinese Navy large combat ships would be out-ranged by the 127-millimeter guns deployed on U.S. cruisers, except China’s Russian-made Sovremenny-class ships and Beijing’s new Type 052D destroyers that are armed with 130-millimeter guns.
The encounter appears to be part of a pattern of Chinese political signaling that it will not accept the presence of American military power in its East Asian theater of influence, Fisher said.
“China has spent the last 20 years building up its Navy and now feels that it can use it to obtain its political objectives,” he said.
Fisher said that since early 2012 China has gone on the offensive in both the South China and East China Seas.
“In this early stage of using its newly acquired naval power, China is posturing and bullying, but China is also looking for a fight, a battle that will cow the Americans, the Japanese, and the Filipinos,” he said.
To maintain stability in the face of Chinese military assertiveness, Fisher said the United States and Japan should seek an armed peace in the region by heavily fortifying the Senkaku Islands and the rest of the island chain they are part of.
“The U.S. and Japan should also step up their rearmament of the Philippines,” Fisher said.
The Cowpens incident is the most recent example of Chinese naval aggressiveness toward U.S. ships.
The U.S. intelligence-gathering ship, USNS Impeccable, came under Chinese naval harassment from a China Maritime Surveillance ship, part of Beijing’s quasi-military maritime patrol craft, in June.
During that incident, the Chinese ship warned the Navy ship it was operating illegally despite sailing in international waters. The Chinese demanded that the ship first obtain permission before sailing in the area that was more than 100 miles from China’s coast.
The U.S. military has been stepping up surveillance of China’s naval forces, including the growing submarine fleet, as part of the U.S. policy of rebalancing forces to the Pacific.
The Impeccable was harassed in March 2009 by five Chinese ships that followed it and sprayed it with water hoses in an effort to thwart its operations.
A second spy ship, the USNS Victorious, also came under Chinese maritime harassment several years ago.
Adm. Samuel Locklear, when asked last summer about increased Chinese naval activities near Guam and Hawaii in retaliation for U.S. ship-based spying on China, said the dispute involves different interpretations of controlled waters.
Locklear said in a meeting with reporters in July, “We believe the U.S. position is that those activities are less constrained than what the Chinese believe.”
China is seeking to control large areas of international waters—claiming they are part of its United Nations-defined economic exclusion zone—that Locklear said cover “most of the major sea lines of communication” near China and are needed to remain free for trade and shipping.
Locklear, who is known for his conciliatory views toward the Chinese military, sought to play down recent disputes. When asked if the Chinese activities were troubling, he said: “I would say it’s not provocative certainly. I’d say that in the Asia-Pacific, in the areas that are closer to the Chinese homeland, that we have been able to conduct operations around each other in a very professional and increasingly professional manner.”
The Pentagon and U.S. Pacific Command have sought to develop closer ties to the Chinese military as part of the Obama administration’s Asia pivot policies.
However, China’s military has shown limited interest in closer ties.
China’s state-controlled news media regularly report that the United States is seeking to defeat China by encircling the country with enemies while promoting dissidents within who seek the ouster of the communist regime.
The Obama administration has denied it is seeking to “contain” China and has insisted it wants continued close economic and diplomatic relations.
President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to seek a new type of major power relationship during a summit in California earlier this year. However, the exact nature of the new relationship remains unclear.
Look at their demographics. China will be old before it gets “rich”. Plus despite their high GDP, much of which is fake as in government misallocated capital, their economy isn’t in good shape. Their housing bubble has yet to burst.
That’s why the Chinese political class is getting belligerent. They’re desperate.
“Chinese garbage scow.....this is the USS Cowpens. Drop your garbage to the bottom of the ocean and get out of our way, or we’ll help you get your garbage to the bottom of the ocean.”
You may have just hit upon a humongous sponsorship opportunity.
With proceeds going to ‘the children’, who could object?
You can thank Barack OCarter and his campaign of appeasement for this carpola. Weakness always invites agression.
Have you seen China’s national debt?
(oh that’s right, China runs a surplus)
A big surplus.
With AMERICA.
Do you have a rodent problem?
I see mousey dung!
What is the equivalent to splash one in naval terms to sinking a ship.
>Bring back US manufacturing now.<
To do so, the Unions and the Democrats must be neutered by the voters. With them in power, the country cannot compete with slave labor like that found in China.
Sadly, the majority of voters here are in it for me, me, me, not what is in the best interests of the country.
Folks
You are either misinformed or missing the point.
Do not assume the Chinese Government, (either the Princelings or Old Guard) are completely in charge.
There are large elements of the PLA/(N)/(AF) that are not in control of the nominal Chinese Government, but junior officers acting rather local “Warlords”. These actions cannot be properly examined using the filter of US experience and concept of Civil control of the Military. The situation in China is now much closer to the historical period of Japan in the 1920’s and we know how that worked out.
These tests by the PLAN are simply that tests and are as one here correctly pointed out assuring freedom of the seas is the number two task on the official task list of the USN only behind defending the Dominions and territories of the US in our doctrines of Seapower and Alfred Thayer Mahan.
It is most probable that these actions are taking place to force the Princelings and Old Guard to give these junior elements a greater share of the wealth that is being generated and concentrated at the top of the party.
Instead of concentrating on free trade and such we need to look at our real enemy, the junior cadre, lest we, in typical US historical knee jerk fashion react in a way to weaken those who have much more to lose than we do.
Forget about unions.
Unions are way down, and only represent something like 10% of American industrial workers anymore.
America needs industry.
Bring back American industry.
“Have you seen China’s national debt?”
China is one of the world’s most indebted nations. It’s just that most of the debt is local government debt.
They may run a trade surplus (tho’ even that is quite small now), but they have tons of debt.
Don't misunderstand me..I'm not defending the Chicoms here..Red China is obviously attempting to project forces, likely sensing a weakening of American resolve.
The real danger is if a Chicom on-site commander loses it...then an incident can easily happen, and escalate rapidly..
>Forget about unions.
Unions are way down, and only represent something like 10% of American industrial workers anymore.<
Unions, then, have no influence on American politics, policy.
Good luck with that.
If you did, you'd reveal a woeful ignorance of the Revolutionary War. Go ahead ... look it up.
I will make it plain. I will make it simple. As a combat veteran, I will say one thing about our so called commander in chief. He is a pure coward. He is a clown. I would not follow him to DisneyWorld. He is a simple minded puke. Sometimes when you walk across the yard, you step in him and curse out loud and have to clean off the smelly Obama from your shoe. End of statement.
USS Cowpens (CG-63) is a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser in service with the United States Navy.
Armament:
2 × 61 cell Mk 41 vertical launch systems
122 × Mix of RIM-66M-5 Standard SM-2MR Block IIIB, RIM-156A SM-2ER Block IV, RIM-161 SM-3, RIM-162A ESSM, RIM-174A Standard ERAM, BGM-109 Tomahawk, or RUM-139A VL-ASROC
8 × RGM-84 Harpoon missiles
2 × Mk 45 Mod 2 5 in / 54 cal lightweight gun
2 × 25 mm Mk 38 gun
2–4 × .50 cal (12.7 mm) gun
2 × Phalanx CIWS Block 1B
2 × Mk 32 12.75 in (324 mm) triple torpedo tubes for lightweight torpedoes
The big question here is not the ships involved, but the boats. Specifically submarines. You can bet your bottom dollar that at least one of the ships had one or more submarines backing them up.
Are you clear on what a national debt is? China doesn’t have a national debt with America.
I do like discussing important ideas, but you don’t even or can’t even get your basic facts correct. It makes it hard to take you seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_debt
China, like the US, is running a government budget deficit:
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/china
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/china
China owns about 8% of the $14 trillion plus US debt.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/moneymatters/ss/How-Much-US-Debt-Does-China-Own.htm
This has been explained to you repeatedly, but you don’t seem able to comprehend it. Ping me once you’ve learned the difference between government debt (real) and a trade deficit (imaginary).
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