China’s recent behaviour should not be encouraged and giving them a concession such as stopping the spy flights does exactly that. Whatever clique in China decided to take advantage of their pilot’s screw up should be heavily discouraged.
Bush sending a CV over there should work. Before they got obnoxious they had a few spy planes flying around. Now they have a carrier and all the escorts as well. Someone inside their government needs the opportunity to point out that this is NOT progress.
Seriously though, it’s far from the first time that the US and some other nation have played chicken with each other and someone lost. My experiences with this have been on both the collection and avoidance sides. (Submarines, and 20 years out of date.)
Soviet boats regularly followed us and we of course tried to do the same. There WERE collisions although they were rare. When they happened everyone went home and chalked it up to experience. The Soviets had AGI ships waiting in international waters every time we left port, ships that were suppsed to be trawlers but had enough antennas to equip a moderate CIA office. Their mission was to collect all the electronic intel they could get and also to force a US boat into a position where they either violated the naval “rules of the road” or ran aground. I assume that the US had something similar waiting on the Soviets when THEY left port.
The US plane was in international waters and was collecting intelligence. Well so what? If the Chinese object to this then they need to tighten up their comms systems and this won’t happen.
That’s the point, though. It can’t be getting terribly much of value that couldn’t be collected through other means just as easily, so I see this as a great opporunity to get something out of them in return for giving up something of little actual value (but plenty symbolic, particularly when they’re so torqued over it) Their suits go back and say they stared down the great America, our suits come back and say we stared down the uppity Chinese. Everyone wins.
Or if they just wanted to shrug it off, then continue the flights as before, pretending nothing happened. That’s a pretty firm response right there, without actually doing anything that could be construed as an intentional threat or insult.
I can’t see much benefit in this hardline tack, except for satisfying patriotic nationalism (which is exactly the problem with China’s perspective in this thing in the first place…) I really don’t see how exclusively using bully tactics makes a nation “great”. At times, they’re called for, yes, but this is not one of them. We’re doing something they don’t like, but is technically legal. They’re doing something we don’t like, but is technically legal. An accident happened. Well, shit happens, we knew that kind of thing came with the territory when we started. We’ve only got fifty years of experience in it. We have no right to go into this bluff and bluster act over such a pissant little thing. You have to pick your fights or risk crying wolf once too many times.
I was under the impression that the AIM7 was no longer in AA service with the USN. I only hear warm talk of ESSM upgrades. Anybody know different.
To answer Padeye, I think all of the USN’s Prowlers are gone. I believe the USAF still operates a few. I wonder when the S-3 will go.
I’m surprised no one has asked the question: how does a cocky “maverick” fighter jock make it in a toltolitarian military? Historically, such militaries tend to crush initiative and behavior of the kind exhibited by that pilot. You’d think after the formal US prostests before the accident, teh PLAAF would have been so embarrassed they’d’ve at least transfered him to a district where he’d see little contact with foriegn aircraft.
I would venture to say that China is neither Communist nor totalitarian, by most definitions, at present. While I could imagine that their military is stricted than ours, surely some elements of their relatively libertine society would creep in (and by “relatively,” I mean relative to North Korea, or China during the Cultural Revolution).
Alternately, the close escorts may have recently become official policy for the PLAAF (that the escorts had been getting more aggressive on the whole over the past several months would seem to suggest this). If this is the case, then the pilot isn’t a hot shot, but is instead following orders (even though this particular pilot wasn’t skilled enough to carry them out).
Then again, I’m a Poli. Sci major in Albany, not a Chinese pilot, so I really have no idea (just conjecture).
IIRC, the original A-6 Intruder has been around for 40-some odd years, and a later variant was the EA-6 Prowler. Both must be bound to the reserves and boneyards if they’re not already there, they’re pretty old aircraft.
On the OP, I think it’s a good idea to have a “witness” plane watching so we can deliver videotape to the world if something like this happens again. But I think it’s pretty clumsy to do this by sending a carrier group and its fighters. That’s just likely to piss the Chinese off more and increase the likelihood of an “incident.” We could accomplish the goal in a more subtle manner, but sending in a carrier is probably a load gesture to domestic politics at least as much, if not more, than it is a gesture to the Chinese.
A6 “Intruder” was the attack aircraft. Prowler was a four seat electronic warfare version. Niether replaced the other. Or so I’m assuming.
I’ll concede that China is not communist or toltalitarian in the strickest of senses, but her military culture more reflects this (my opinion from what I understand).
After an official protest against a pilot holding his email address against his cockpit canopy, I would assume ANY air force would disipline him and move him someplace relatively quiet. It’s not much of a leap to be confident that this pilot was the type to cause his CO some grief. Again, even in liberal “western” air forces, this is hardly tolerated. I’d expect it to be loterated less so in China’s military culture (not militant culture, but the culture of the military folk in China - Just covering my ass).
When someone who should’ve been fired at the job, wasn’t, it raises legitmate questions of “influence”. After all, military service with a “good” record as a pre-requisite to a political career isn’t uniquely American. Hense, the “Sanator’s Son”.
“But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong. Tell me what you think America. Give us a call at…”
I have a friend that is a Tomcat driver and he told me that although the AIM54 is a very impressive piece of hardware, it with the AWG9 is a tad over-rated. Something about reality being a little different than theory.
He did however have a lot of good things to say about the AMRAAM and the F-16 and F-15 … not much nice to say about the Hornets though, interestingly enough…
I guess if you think about it though, those are damn old missles and firing systems (even with some intermidate upgrades) Still pretty impressive. Isn’t there a newer version of the Phoenix coming online soon?
… not much nice to say about the Hornets though, interestingly enough…