Secret flight? So secret its on CNN.
What the US is doing there is in the spirit of what americans are doing when they flaunt cartoons of Mohammad or refuse to participate with police at checkpoints.
If you don’t stop a bully they just keep pushing. It is our responsibility and duty to push back.
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
I’m not at all confident about the response of the paper tiger in the white house in the event or an “incident.”
No. Navy Aviators are pilots. The P-8 has two, plus (usually) a third relief aviator. It also has two Naval Flight Officers (NFOs), an ordnanceman, and five or more sensor station operators (active and passive acoustic), plus radar and other visual sensor operators. Eighteen are now flying. The original plan was to have 118 P-8s (to replace what had been 456 P-3s in the 1970s) and several dozen Trident UAVs. The Trident may fly by 2017.
2. >>The P8 is one expression of the Obama administration's pivot to Asia, and its principle mission here is keeping a watchful eye on China.
LOL! The P-8 was a product of the Multimission Maritime Aircraft Program from 2001, and became the P-8 in 2004. Since then, 18 operational airframes have been produced. Obama has had zero involvement with or interest in it.
3. >>In 2001, a Chinese jet collided with a U.S. EP-3, the P8's predecessor,
No. The P-8's predecessor is the P-3C ASW aircraft, the craft involved in the collision. The EP-3 is an elint bird, unarmed and basically blind to the outside.
Jim needs more background in naval aviation.
What will Obozo do when the Chi-Coms shoot down one of these planes? They have previously buzzed our planes nearly causing them to crash and they can be sure that Obama will at most have a weak or tepid response.
It’s important for China to continue to make progress while the current President is in, as they don’t know if the next President might actually have testicles.