Landing ship sailed dangerously close
to U.S. guided missile cruiser
December 13, 2013 5:00 am
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 USSCowpens, 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.
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