The Biden administration has postured against China’s alleged aggression, but as Beijing representatives have pointed out, it’s the US that is increasing military activity off China’s shores and drilling for assault operations, not the other way around.
The US flew 65 spy plane missions across the South China Sea in April, according to data compiled by the South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI) think tank published on Friday.
According to the report, the US flew five types of reconnaissance aircraft across the area, reflecting a wide interest in everything from maritime patrol to signals intelligence and battlefield construction.
SCSPI also tracked five missions flown by the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS), a powerful intelligence-gathering aircraft that carries a ground moving target indicator able to track dozens of ground units as well as a synthetic aperture radar capable of taking highly detailed images of the ground for hundreds of kilometers in every direction. A single MQ-4C Triton unmanned aerial vehicle also flew across the South China Sea in April.
Northrop Grumman E-8 Joint STARS
Other spy planes continue to operate in the vicinity of China as well: A U-2 Dragon Lady high altitude spy plane was tracked flying across the East China Sea on Thursday from the USAF’s Osan Air Force Base in South Korea.
These flights have taken place in the context of military drills by a US carrier strike group and an amphibious ready group, together sporting more than 100 aircraft and thousands of US Marines, in the South China Sea. Both of China’s carriers also later visited the sea after conducting their own drills in the Philippine Sea, which were interrupted by close-sailing US warships.
A U.S. Navy Lockheed EP-3E Aries II assigned to Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron 1 (VQ-1) “World Watchers” in flight over the Mediterranean Sea on 28 February 2019.
On Thursday, Chinese defense ministry spokesperson Senior Col. Wu Qian said that since US President Joe Biden took office on January 20, US reconnaissance flights around China have increased by 40% and US warships had been 20% more active than during the same period last year.
The US claims China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea are illegal and it has postured itself as standing up for the rights of the region’s other nations, as well as defending international law. However, China is in its own lengthy negotiations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to draw up a mutually agreed Code of Conduct for the South China Sea, and the US itself has never actually ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that it claims to be enforcing.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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