US Deploying Surveillance Drones Near China

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US Deploying Surveillance Drones Near China -- News from Antiwar.com


The Pentagon will begin flying surveillance drones off the coastlines of Japan, China and Taiwan, an agreement reached after talks between Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Japanese Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto at the Pentagon on Sunday.


The unmanned aerial missions will focus on a Pacific island chain called the Diaoyutai Islands, which have become the focal point of a simmering territorial dispute between China and Japan. Even Sen. John McCain, one of the biggest hawks in Congress, called the deployment "unnecessarily provocative."

In keeping with the Obama administration's antagonistic military postures towards China, the US has backed various neighboring countries from Japan to the Philippines. And it's no surprise drones have taken a larger role in what the Pentagon plans to make a new military theater of Air-Sea Battle.

New war strategies called "Air-Sea Battle" reveal Washington's broader goals in the region and illustrate how a war with China – which the US apparently yearns for – would play out.

"Stealthy American bombers and submarines would knock out China's long-range surveillance radar and precision missile systems located deep inside the country," reports theWashington Post. "The initial 'blinding campaign' would be followed by a larger air and naval assault."

The Obama administration has been ramping up the pressure on China with an increasingly antagonistic foreign policy. The so-called 'Asia pivot' is an aggressive policy that involves surging American military presence throughout the region – in the Philippines, Japan, Australia, Guam, South Korea, Singapore, etc. – in an unprovoked scheme to contain rising Chinese economic and military influence.

Chinese officials have not appreciated this unprovoked bellicosity. In May the Chinese Defense Ministry accused the Pentagon of hyping a Chinese military threat out of thin air. Others have said these Pentagon moves could start an arms race.

"If the U.S. military develops Air-Sea Battle to deal with the [People's Liberation Army], the PLA will be forced to develop anti-Air-Sea Battle," one officer, Col. Gaoyue Fan, said last year in a debate sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a defense think tank.

A recent report from the Center for Strategic International Studies predicted that next year "could see a shift in Chinese foreign policy based on the new leadership's judgment that it must respond to a US strategy that seeks to prevent China's reemergence as a great power."

"Signs of a potential harsh reaction are already detectable," the report said. "The US Asia pivot has triggered an outpouring of anti-American sentiment in China that will increase pressure on China's incoming leadership to stand up to the United States. Nationalistic voices are calling for military countermeasures to the bolstering of America's military posture in the region and the new US defense strategic guidelines."
 

W.G.Ewald

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Here is an article with a little less hysterical tone.

US to deploy drones over Diaoyutais - Taipei Times
The US will use its most advanced unmanned reconnaissance aircraft to monitor Chinese activity in waters surrounding the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), the object of an acrimonious dispute between Beijing and Tokyo, Japanese media are reporting.

The decision was made during a meeting between Japanese Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto and US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at the Pentagon on Sunday, NHK and the Yomiuri Shimbun said, adding that the drones would also conduct surveillance around Okinawa.

At least three unarmed Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk drones have been deployed at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam since September 2010, bolstering the operational intelligence capabilities of US forces in the Asia-Pacific.

Operating at an altitude of about 18,000m, the RQ-4 provides near-real-time, long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance imagery by means of a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar. It played a role in damage assessment following the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in March last year.

Amid rising tensions between Japan and China over the disputed islets, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has mostly relied on P-3C "Orion" surveillance aircraft to monitor Chinese naval activity in the area.

Taiwan also claims sovereignty over the islands.

Tetsuo Kotani, a fellow at The Japan Institute of International Affairs in Tokyo, said the deployment sends an important message.

"One of the urgent issues for the US-Japan alliance is to enhance intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance [ISR] cooperation," he told the Taipei Times yesterday. "The Global Hawk can serve as a symbol of allied ISR cooperation."

"This is an important step for the alliance and sends a strong message to Beijing that Washington stands firmly with Tokyo," he said.

Although the US does not officially take a position on the sovereignty dispute, some believe the Diaoyutais fall within the scope of Article 5 of the US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Co-operation and Security.

However, Kotani said Beijing should not misunderstand the real message.

"This is US reassurance to Japan. As long as Japan is reassured by the US, Japan does not have to take provocative actions vis-a-vis Beijing over the Senkakus," he said. "No country wants to increase the tensions."

The Diaoyutais are known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan.

During Sunday's meeting, Panetta and Morimoto also agreed to explore eventual revisions of the Guidelines for Japan-US Defense Cooperation, which govern cooperation between the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the US military during crises.

Passed in 1978, the guidelines were substantially revised in 1997 in response to the North Korean nuclear program.

"We shared the view that it's important to jointly study and discuss [security matters], taking into consideration changes in the security environment and what Japan-US cooperation should be," Morimoto told a press conference.

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, the review will focus on defense cooperation on the Nansei Islands in response to Chinese military expansion and increasing activity in waters surrounding Japan, as well as North Korea's nuclear and missile development and post-disaster cooperation.

No specific procedures or timeline for the review were discussed.
 

s002wjh

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well on another note seem S.korean anger japanese on its dispute

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/w...puted-islets-angers-japan.html?_r=1&ref=world

SEOUL, South Korea — President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea flew to a set of islets locked in a territorial dispute with Japan on Friday, dismissing protests from Tokyo and making a trip that was bound to heighten diplomatic tensions between Washington's two key Asian allies.

Japan called Mr. Lee's visit "unacceptable" and recalled its ambassador from Seoul in protest, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told reporters in Tokyo.

Adding drama to the simmering historical hostility that Mr. Lee's surprise trip magnified, the archrivals South Korea and Japan were set to clash in London on Friday for the Olympic bronze medal in soccer, a game to be watched by millions of people in both countries.

Although South Korean cabinet ministers and national legislators had previously visited the barely inhabitable volcanic outcroppings in the sea between Korea and Japan, Mr. Lee was the first South Korean president to travel there to highlight his country's territorial control. A squadron of armed South Korean police officers have manned the islets, called Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan, since the 1950s. An elderly fishing couple also lives there with government support.

"Dokdo is truly our territory, and it's worth defending with our lives," Mr. Lee told the police officers, according to the national news agency Yonhap, whose reporter accompanied the presidential entourage.

With his popularity plummeting amid corruption scandals implicating his associates, Mr. Lee is badly in need of a boost to his political leverage. Opposition politicians were quick to accuse him of making the unprecedented presidential trip to tap South Koreans' deep-seated nationalistic sentiments against Japan for gains in domestic politics. Although Mr. Lee is banned by law from seeking re-election in the presidential election scheduled for December, his governing party feared being labeled "pro-Japanese" so much that it forced his government in June to postpone the signing of an agreement to share classified military data with Japan.

The dispute over the islets remains one of the most contentious issues left unresolved from Japan's often brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 until its World War II defeat in 1945.

Mr. Lee traveled there by helicopter. He stayed 70 minutes on the main islet, sharing pizza and chicken with the police guards, Yonhap said.

His trip came after Japan angered South Koreans by reconfirming its territorial claim to the islets in its new defense white paper published late last month. Mr. Lee is scheduled to deliver his last major national speech as president on Aug. 15, which South Korea celebrates as a major national holiday observing Japan's World War II surrender and Korea's liberation.

The islets are surrounded by rich fishing grounds and natural gas deposits. South Koreans also hold deep emotional attachment to the rocks. To them, Japan's territorial claim epitomizes Japan's early 20th-century aggression and what they consider its refusal to atone for its colonial occupation of Korea, during which Koreans were banned from using their Korean names and language.

Along with the territorial dispute, the two countries remain divided over compensation for Korean women who historians said were forced or cheated into working as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II. In July, a South Korean man rammed his light truck into the main gate of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.

Mr. Lee's government said his trip was intended to counter Japan's increasingly pronounced campaign to highlight its territorial claim to the islets. Last year, three Japanese lawmakers who wanted to visit the islets to advertise their country's claim were denied entry to South Korea.

"We encourage good relations between both of our allies," said Patrick Ventrell, acting deputy spokesman of the United States State Department.

While Mr. Lee was visiting the islets, South Korean prosecutors announced that they had indicted a former aide to the president on charges of accepting bribes from a banker. He was the latest in a series of relatives and political allies of Mr. Lee to be indicted on corruption charges.
also seem like S.korean is getting closer to china now
South Korea has proposed a military information-sharing pact with China. A senior Foreign Ministry official recently visited Beijing, where he briefed Chinese officials on Seoul's pursuit of such an agreement with Tokyo and made an unofficial proposal for such a similar pact.

"The treaty we're seeking with Tokyo is a limited agreement we've already concluded with 24 countries, including Russia and Ukraine, so there's no reason not to conclude a similar one with Beijing," a government official here said. "We're waiting for an answer from Beijing."

It would be South Korea's first military pact with China, which fought on the side of North Korea in the Korean War.

The proposal aims to pre-empt resistance from China to the pact with Japan, according to experts.

But China is wary of sending the wrong signal to ally North Korea. Already Seoul and Beijing are expanding military exchanges and cooperation based on their strategic partnership. The two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and chiefs of military service as well as the defense ministers from both countries already meet regularly.

Meanwhile, the government decided to put off signing the military pact with Japan amid worries from opposition parties and civic groups that Tokyo has failed to change its position on wartime atrocities like the sexual enslavement of Korean "comfort women" for the imperial army.

The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea - Seoul Proposes Military Pact with Beijing
 

Ray

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Ideal way to keep a tab on the situation without belligerence.

Should deploy more!
 

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