U.S. Navy Ships to South China Sea

The Navy Times [ http://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2016/03/03/stennis-strike-group-deployed-to-south-china-sea/81270736/]. and Fox News [http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/03/04/us-navy-deploys-several-ships-to-south-china-sea.html]. have reported on Thursday that the US will send a fairly large carrier strike group to the South China Sea.  This will include an aircraft carrier, two cruisers, and two destroyers which will join two others already there.

China must have known the US would do something about their continuous buildup of the islands in that area, but I doubt that they were too surprised at the numbers of ships that were coming.  They have hacked our military networks for years and have a good idea of what our military forces are up to.  That is a large fleet that is hard to hide and it takes weeks to get to where they are going.  When they get there, we are going to see some interesting tests of diplomacy-by-boat.

The last time we ratcheted up our engagements with them, they sailed some ships of their own close enough to Alaska to get our attention.  They waited until the President of the United States was visiting there, so they would be close enough to make their point.  The Navy is already saying "We do this routine patrol all the time" which is true enough by itself, but during those patrols we didn't have a nuclear powered aircraft carrier as long as 3 football fields sailing with them.  Not to mention the arsenal of weapons that goes on it.  This is a powerful ship with global reach, right into the backyard of China's disputed area.

We can expect China to do what they did the last time and start getting into our territorial waters, and those of our allies, on a more regular basis.  They won't stop building up the South China Sea, and they won't talk about demilitarization of the islands.  The Chinese just keep on keeping on.   They built those islands from nothing but water and little strips of land.  Now they have runways as long as the ones at Dulles Airport.  They aren't going to give them up.  What does that aircraft carrier do then?

All of this started to happen over 7 years ago and all the US did was talk.  Putting that fleet in then would have had a chance of keeping China from building up that area.  Now, it is going to put good men in a bad situation.