Escellent this article below explain clearly the rational why China built the SCS islet bases excellent James Holmes is Toshi Yoshihara coauthor on many article about Chinese navy. And of course China basher. Here is the summary of his thought. Except that China does not do it to colonize other or wrest other people land, but to safe guard their soft under belly.
Think of American conquest of vast expense of the west with few soldier station in fort and forray out to destroy the Indian and send scout to observe and act as sentry.
And those bases will be more valuable in the coming years as China progress with their advance UAV, UUV, Sea glider Sossus, Undersea great wall and integrared command and communication on those islet.
The other use of of course is to hide their SSBN and SSN and form Bastion Soviet style. Without air cover and naval protection those sub will be hunted. The islet will support those effort with situation awareness, fuel, navigation, R&R
It is stroke of genius I gues China outflanked them all
Excerpt.
Without a monopoly of force over rival contestants—the Philippines, Vietnam, or most recently Malaysia—China’s sovereignty will remain in dispute.
In a sense, then, the PLA finds itself wearing the U.S. Army’s boots from Wild West days of yore. It is trying to wrest sovereign control from neighbors by imposing a monopoly of force. The maritime environment in nudges the PLA toward a strategy relying on island fastnesses. Ships and aircraft can range out across the sea from bases atop artificial islands in the Spratly or Paracel archipelagoes, hunting for navies or coast guards that defy Beijing’s wishes. These are Communist China’s counterparts to forts dispatching army scouts. Warships, coast-guard cutters, fishing vessels, aircraft—these are conveyances that cannot loiter everywhere, forever. But if positioned at key points on the nautical chart they can make regular sweeps, vector in heavy forces to trouble spots, and in the process help the PLA approximate the geographic coverage at sea that an army or police force achieves on land. They can approach Admiral Wylie’s ideal of the man on the scene with a gun—even at sea.
So the aircraft that puzzle my friend are scouts, part of the long arm of Chinese sovereignty in embattled waters. They gather the information that helps senior officers direct combat power to where it is needed. The more often they deploy to island bases, and the more they do so in significant numbers, the better the PLA’s chances of imposing stifling coverage in seaways Beijing considers its own. And the more Chinese sovereignty will become reality rather than aspiration. QED.
In the coming years, the China problem will only worsen for Southeast Asian coastal states that insist on their rights to maritime jurisdiction and undersea resources. As propulsion technology advances, for instance, it may become possible for unmanned ships or aircraft to linger on station virtually forever. Boundless seaborne or airborne endurance would grant PLA commanders a surveillance capability U.S. Army commanders could have barely imagined in the American West. The network will become even more formidable if PLA weapons engineers arm unmanned craft in large numbers, letting them act not only as eyes in the sky but as firing platforms in their own right.
Wylie would have to amend his metaphor were he among the quick today. We appear to be entering an age when armed forces no longer need to deploy soldiers with guns under all circumstances. Human overseers might come to use remotely piloted or autonomous gunmen to exert their will. If so, unmanned technologies would have distanced people from the fight at the same time they helped solidify control of embattled space.
So it seems practitioners of high-seas strategy have much to learn from ground warfare after all. And ground-pounders’ teachings disturb as much as they enlighten.
Southeast Asians—and lovers of freedom of the sea everywhere—must come to terms with China’s bid for sovereignty. They must act, making common cause with likeminded partners and fashioning couhnterstrategies to meet Beijing’s high-plains offensive. Otherwise the region courts an American Indian fate.
