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Pentagon: Chinese Ship Captures US Underwater Drone Fom Sea (usatoday.com)
The Pentagon is demanding that China return an "unlawfully seized" underwater drone after a Chinese warship took the device from waters near a US oceanographic vessel. From a report on USA Today: A U.S. Navy underwater drone operating in international waters was captured by a Chinese warship in the South China Sea, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement on Friday. The drone is not armed and is used for gathering weather and temperature data. The incident occurred Thursday. The drone was launched by the USNS Bowditch, a civilian crewed oceanographic ship that is operated by the Military Sealift Command, off the coast of the Philippines. These types of drones, called gliders, typically collect unclassified data, such as water temperatures and salinity levels. "We call upon China to return our UUV immediately, and to comply with all of its obligations under international law," Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement, using the abbreviation for "unmanned underwater vehicle."
That would be better as a Haiku.
That's what winners do
They grab whatever they want
Grab by the pussy
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
This is what a slow motion train wreck looks like.
The Chinese will want the United States and Trump to lose face because of what Trump said about Taiwan. Because Obama is still in power, Trump will make fun of him for being a weakling in his response to China, whatever it is. Then, once Trump becomes President, he will have to respond in a way that escalates the problem, to differentiate himself from the "weak" Obama. China will do more of these types of actions to make Trump lose face. Trump will continue to escalate the crisis by tweeting insults to China, because Trump will rather start a war than lose face. Add to this the fact that the Chinese government needs to distract its population from its own failures and corruption, and what is better to do that than a potential war with the United States? This is a perfect storm of stupid, needless crisis, and it will end very badly.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
This is just the one of a long sequence of clearly illegal actions.
Why, because it violates the UN convention that governs autonomous vessels in international waters? Here's why I think it's a non-issue: if it's a civilian/research drone, the Chinese got nothing. If it's a military/intelligence drone with features or aspects that are classified... well, all is fair in love and war.
But rest assured, we are at war (as we always have been).
I remember that China has been unsuccessful in keeping ANY of its friends around for long other than North Korea which is very telling. Look back over the last 65 years. They've flirted with Russia and then bit the hand...and India....and Vietnam....and now the US...etc.
If there is any kind of hot war, China will be alone since they have proven they cannot be trusted. The instant they are engaged in any real conflict, all their domestic issues will come home to roost...Tibet, Xinjiang,Taiwan, etc.
China wants to appear strong, but if the poop hits the fan, they don't have much of a chance. Who is going to help them? The African and South American countries who have been taking financial aid in exchange for wagging fingers at Taiwan? Please.
Regardless of what Iraq looks like now, when they attacked Kuwait they had one of the best equipped, largest, and most modern military machines in the world. The US dismembered them in weeks. Granted, China has nuclear weapons, but there isn't much incentive to go there when they've got hundreds of warheads and the US has thousands. If the US were to dismember China's command and control systems and degrade China's conventional forces that country would be ungovernable pretty quickly. No need to invade. I doubt the kleptocrats want to see that happen. They'll make a lot of noise and then back down (while squirreling their cash out of the country to those running dog capitalist nations that they claim to hate so much while sending their children their to study and store their ill gotten corruption money.
"China is very sensitive about unmanned underwater vehicles because they can track our nuclear ballistic missile submarines fleet," said retired Major General Xu Guangyu, a senior researcher at Beijing-based research group the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association. "If one from the Bowditch can be detected and even snatched by a Chinese naval ship, it shows it's getting too close to the sensitive water areas."
The moral ground has been lost so calling people thugs doesn't work anymore.
Bush, Cheney etc didn't think ahead when they approved torturing folks.