Anti-aircraft Weapons on Chinese Islands

I have used the Asia Maritime Transparancy Initiative as a source since they started.  They watch those little islands in the South China Sea and report on what they see.  This time, they say, the Chinese have raised the prospect of "defending their territory" with large anti-aircraft guns  and close-support weapons.  They have nice pictures from DigiGlobe to prove their point.  It is hard to get away from satellite photos.

The Chinese are applying escalation to their work on the islands, steadily making them into military bases that promise to challenge any aircraft that fly into those areas.  As I have said before, it is one thing to get the verbal warnings that the BBC got flying a small plane through those air spaces, and quite another to see the radars from ground units painting a target.  Only military aircraft with air defenses can see those radars at work.  If we don't start laying the ground work for some retaliation before we have our aircraft challenged, we are going to have U.S aircraft painted on radar of Chinese weapons from territory that we do not recognize as theirs.  This is like a ship in the middle of the ocean targeting an aircraft flying over it.  We can't have it.  But, we are going to have it, anyway.  Let's hope our military is prepared to counter the kind of engagements that are coming.  The Chinese are not going to stop what they are doing and seem prepared to go to war over territory they claim, even though the rest of the world does not agree with them.