The Philippine Territory

About 40 miles northwest of Manila, the capital of the Philippines, American spy planes are taking off for secretive missions in the South China Sea. There the planes loiter, watching for Chinese warships that, suspiciously, have been appearing in region more and more often lately.

The U.S. spy missions are so sensitive, the Pentagon won’t say whether or not the flights even exist.
Perhaps it’s not surprising. The South China Sea is home to hundreds of islands known as the Spratlys — and no one can agree who owns what. China claims most of them along with the islands’ bountiful natural resources. Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan claim other chunks. Any day now,

Beijing could plop down a base on an islet and spark an international incident, or beach an old ship loaded with troops on a reef and turn it into a D-I-Y outpost.

Spies over the Spratlys

The reconnaissance flights are not all going one-way — the U.S. is boosting spy missions, too. This week Japanese news agency Kyodo News reported it had obtained a classified government documentdetailing flights by the Navy’s P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea.

The mission, according to the agency, is to snoop on Chinese frigates and surveillance ships operating near the Second Thomas Shoal, a group of islets 147 miles west of the Philippines and home to a rusting, beached hospital ship garrisoned by a small detachment of malnourished Philippine troops. China claims the shoal as its own.

The authenticity of the documents could not be independently confirmed, and the agency did not state which government the document came from. “The Navy routinely operates in international airspace around the world, namely as part of our continued forward presence to support security and stability,” Senior Chief Michael Lewis, a Pacific Fleet spokesman, tells War is Boring. We’re obliged to note this isn’t a confirmation nor a flat denial of the spy flights.

The four-engine P-3Cs are reportedly based at Clark Air Base (a former U.S. airfield now owned by the Philippines), partly at the urging of a concerned Philippine president Benigno Aquino. Dozens of the Spratly Islands’ reefs, islands and atolls are occupied by the military forces of five nations with overlapping claims over the sea’s substantial mineral and natural gas reserves — there are more than 600 in total and they’re largely uninhabited. The recent Chinese naval deployments have set off “alarm bells in Manila,” Kyodo News reported.

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