these boys going about their business....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/w...ed-spratly-islands-satellite-images-show.html
Images Show China Building Aircraft Runway in Disputed Spratly Islands
BEIJING — China is building a concrete runway on an island in the South China Sea’s contested waters that will be capable of handling military aircraft when finished, satellite images released Thursday show.The first section of the runway appears like a piece of gray ribbon on an image taken last month of Fiery Cross Reef, part of the Spratly Islands, anarchipelago claimed by at least three other countries. Adjacent to the runway, work is underway on an apron for taxiing and parking planes.The runway, which is expected to be about 10,000 feet long — enough to accommodate fighter jets and surveillance aircraft — represents a game changer in the competition between the United States and China in the South China Sea, said Peter Dutton, professor of strategic studies at the Naval War College in Rhode Island.“This is a major strategic event,” Mr. Dutton said. “In order to have sea control, you need to have air control.”Analysts had speculated that China planned to build an airstrip onFiery Cross Reef, but the satellite image from March 23, provided by Airbusand released Thursday by Jane’s Defense Weekly, is the first hard evidencethat it is doing so.In time, Mr. Dutton said, China is likely to install radar and missiles that could intimidate smaller countries like the Philippines, an Americanally, and Vietnam, which also have claims to the Spratlys, as they resupplytheir modest military garrisons in the area.
More broadly, he said, China’s ability to use Fiery Cross Reef as alanding strip for fighter and surveillance aircraft will vastly expand its zone of competition with the United States in the South China Sea.Over the past decade and a half, a series of tense encounters between American and Chinese forces on the sea and in the air — starting with a near collision in 2001 between an American EP*3 spy plane and a Chinese fighter — have occurred in the sea’s northern waters, near China. The new installations in the Spratlys, about 1,000 miles beyond China’ssouthernmost point on Hainan Island, will create a much wider arena for potential close calls, Mr. Dutton said.“This will expand the area in which there are likely to be tensions between the United States and China,” he said.The construction on Fiery Cross Reef is part of a larger Chinese reclamation project involving scores of dredgers on at least five islands in the South China Sea. China is converting tiny reefs, once barely visible above water, into islands big enough to handle military hardware, personnel and recreation facilities for workers.Satellite images of the reclamation efforts have been released in steady doses over the last few months, as smaller countries with claims to islandsin the area have voiced concern about China’s accelerated construction, andas the United States has stepped up its criticism.During his recent first trip to Asia as the American defense secretary,Ashton B. Carter said in Japan that the reclamation efforts were seriously aggravating tensions between Beijing and Washington and hurting the prospects for diplomatic solutions.After Mr. Carter made those remarks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research group, released images of Mischief Reef, also in the Spratly archipelago, that showed large*scaledredging of sand and coral to create land mass on what had been a partlysubmerged reef.The construction on Fiery Cross Reef, which is several hundred miles west of Mischief Reef, appears to have taken place within the last several weeks. An image taken by Airbus on Feb. 6, also released Thursday by Jane’s Defense Weekly, shows empty sand where the runway is now being
China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement last week that the reclamation efforts were intended to serve civilian purposes, such asproviding a base for search*and*rescue operations, but also for “satisfying the need of necessary military defense.” Though the statement placed more emphasis on the nonmilitary goals, it was a rare acknowledgment ofChinese military intentions in the South China Sea.Mr. Hardy said that China’s military appeared to have chosen Fiery Cross Reef as a command*and*control center for its Spratly Islands operations.China claims more than 80 percent of the South China Sea, on the grounds that a so*called nine*dash line drawn around the waterway by China in the late 1940s conforms to China’s rights in the sea. No othercountry recognizes the validity of the nine*dash line, and many fear that China’s reclamation activities are part of a drive to create an inevitability about Chinese ownership.
