J-11s

China has called on the United States to stop its close reconnaissance activities after the Pentagon reported that two Chinese fighter jets intercepted a US military spy aircraft over the South China Sea. “Two tactical [J-11s] aircraft from the People’s Republic of China” intercepted the Navy EP-3 Orion, a US maritime reconnaissance aircraft, which was on a “routine patrol” in international airspace, Defense Department spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Michelle Baldanza told NBC News. Baldanza said: “The Chinese jets flew by the US aircraft at a distance of approximately 50 feet (15 meters).

Having relentless provoked Russia over the past month, when week after week the Pentagon expressed its shock and dismay that Russians dare to scramble fighter jets when US missile cruisers or reconnaissance planes fly next to, or above, Russian territory the US has decided to pick on another target: China.

On Tuesday, multiple media outlets jumped at the opportunity to report that China has built radar facilities at Cuarteron Reef, Beijing’s southern-most South Pacific sandcastle.

“New radar facilities being developed in the Spratlys, on the other hand, could significantly change the operational landscape,”  Gregory Poling of CSIS’s Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative said, explaining why the radar installations are actually a bigger deal than the deployment of HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island.