Poseidon misadventure and posturing

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-080914.html



Poseidon misadventure and posturing
By Brian Cloughley
Sep 8, '14

On August 19 a United States P-8 Poseidon intelligence gathering aircraft was flying an electronic surveillance mission 135 miles (217 kilometers) east of China's Hainan Island when it was buzzed by a Chinese fighter plane. The P-8 was well within China's Exclusive Economic Zone, which extends, as do all EEZs, up to 200 nautical miles (230 miles or 370 kilometers) and there was no reason for its being there other than to spy on China. The Chinese sent up a J-11B fighter to have a look at the spy-plane and its pilot had a ball. He flew within nose-tweaking distance of the P-8 and performed some skilful tricks, including doing a barrel roll only a few feet above it, which aerobatic dexterity the White House called a "deeply concerning provocation." So let's think about provocation.

The Chinese fighter was 135 miles from China's south coast. The US spy plane was 7,500 miles from America's west coast. (Even Hawaii is 6,000 miles from Hainan.) But if the Chinese ever sent a spy plane to fly at that distance from California and it was detected picking up transmissions from, say, the Point Mugu weapons testing base 50 miles up the coast from Los Angeles, do we imagine that this might be described by Washington as a "deeply concerning provocation"? Of course it would - and rightly so.

And it was certainly a provocation when an American ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) plane conducted a spying operation targeting China's signals intelligence facility at the Lingshui military base on the south coast of Hainan. Understandably, China doesn't like being spied on and ordered up a fighter jock with orders to enjoy himself and scare the hell out of the P-3 crew, which he appears to have done most successfully.

There was a smidgen of mild criticism in some foreign media about the P-3 being on a spy mission so close to China but this was airily dismissed by the Pentagon which declared loftily that "military activities may be conducted within the Exclusive Economic Zone of another nation as an exercise of the freedoms of navigation and overflight." So can we take it that if ever the offshore sky of the United States is speckled with Chinese and Russian electronic intelligence aircraft on missions within 135 miles of its shoreline, then there will be no complaints from Washington? In a pig's valise, buddy.

--

Things that make me go Hmmmmm:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-3_Orion

Unit cost US$36 million (FY1987)[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_P-8_Poseidon

Unit cost US$256.5m(FY2015)[5]
Unit cost US$275.7M (with R&D, FY13)