Significant U.S. and Chinese Air and Naval Activity in South China Sea

Dec. 31, 2022, 2022 (EIRNS)—The War Zone, basing itself on a number of sources, reported yesterday that while a Chinese J-11 fighter jet was intercepting a U.S. RC-135 over the South China Sea, the PLA Navy’s other aircraft carrier, the Shandong and its battle group, were engaged in drills simulating attacks on a U.S. Navy task group. “As part of that exercise, a strike group led by the Shandong simulated attacks on a U.S. Navy formation,” an official from an unnamed Asian country disclosed to the Financial Times. Indeed, the War Zone reports, it’s now clear that there was significant air and naval activity in the South China Sea at the time, which also included refueling sorties above the Bashi Channel, the highly strategic straits which run from the southern end of Taiwan to the northern tip of the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

Furthermore, it’s highly conceivable that the RC-135 that was intercepted was monitoring the same Chinese military drill as it unfolded in the air and in the waters of the South China Sea. In the past, the SCS Probing Initiative, hosted by the Peking University in Beijing, has claimed that “The U.S. military conducts three to five sorties to the South China Sea every day.”

On Dec. 21, according to the SCS Probing Initiative, the U.S. military sent three P-8A maritime patrol aircraft, one RC-135V surveillance aircraft, and one E-3G airborne early warning and control aircraft from Clark Air Base and Kadena Air Base to operate over the South China Sea and south of the Taiwan Strait (the War Zone doesn’t point out that the SCS Probing Initiative uses air traffic data which is publicly available on websites like Flightradar24). The RC-135V in question could very well have been the one intercepted by the J-11. This was all happening as China’s other aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, and its battle group have been operating in the Philippine Sea.

“The ability of the PLAN to carry out simultaneous large-scale carrier operations in two different locations is a significant one, as carriers and out-of-area operations become more central to its concept of operations,” the War Zone writes. “Overall, the events of Dec. 21 reflect the patterns of activity that are increasingly commonplace for both China and the United States in the region.”

The War Zone reports separately that the U.S. Air Force is in the process of installing an over-the-horizon radar on the island of Palau. Called the Tactical Mobile Over-the-Horizon Radar or TACMOR, it is being installed to enhance air and maritime domain situational awareness for U.S. and allied forces in the region. The TACMOR is one example of the Pentagon’s effort to spread military infrastructure all over islands in the Western Pacific.