PLAN SCS Bases/Islands/Vessels (Not a Strategy Page)

Geographer said:

An artificial island twice the size of Diego Garcia? I'll believe it when I see it. Don't forget that any such base would be surrounded by Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Filipino, and Malaysian-occupied islands which can monitor the base. China will not dominate the South China Sea until it finds some way to expel non-PRC troops from all the islands.

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90 sq km is 45 times the size of Woody Island and 180 times the size of Itu Aba Island. Just image how many troops, combat aircrafts and ships it can hold. I just looked at the map of Spratly Islands, Fiery Cross Reef is at least 100 km away from other claimants' nearest islands (which can only hold few hundred troops and no jet fighters). Also China got 5 other reclaimed islands can serve as forward stations, so I don't think other claimants can get near Fiery Cross Island.

It would a huge and important base, I agree. But what does it mean to 'dominate' the South China Sea? If Vietnamese, Filipino, Taiwanese, and Malaysian ships take troops and supplies from the mainland to their respective islands, their fishing vessels ply the waters, and their planes overfly the region, how is that dominance?

Geographer: I tried , but my links are still automatically blocked off with **** by this forum.

Perhaps you can repost some of important img for non-members to see.

June 2014 article from The Diplomat references unnamed earlier reports in Chinese media:

plans had been drawn up on constructing an artificial island on the Fiery Cross Reef. Those reports said that the project would cost $5 billion and take ten years, and would ultimately produce a five-square-kilometer military base.

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article from South China Morning Post, also published June 2014, references the more grand proposal being discussed:

The proposal to build an artificial island there had been submitted to the central government, said Jin Canrong , a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. The artificial island would be at least double the size of the US military base of Diego Garcia, a remote coral atoll occupying an area of 44 square kilometres in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Jin added.

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Of course the more modest proposal of a 5 sq. km island could certainly act as 'Stage 1' in building towards the more grand 90 sq. km proposal. But given the suggested cost of $5bn for the smaller island, surely there would be diminishing returns in terms of the additional facilities that could be accomodated against the cost of doing so well short of 90 sq km.

Geographer said:

It would a huge and important base, I agree. But what does it mean to 'dominate' the South China Sea? If Vietnamese, Filipino, Taiwanese, and Malaysian ships take troops and supplies from the mainland to their respective islands, their fishing vessels ply the waters, and their planes overfly the region, how is that dominance?

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Such an island base will give China a massive forward operating base that can be used to station entire regiments of fighters and strikers, serve as a key naval base and marine garrison. You can also put a massive radar station there to effectively monitor most of the SCS and serve as a key C&C centre.

This island would also make a good home for those new Zburs that PLAN recent got, although China will probably hold off on deploying them there to avoid raising tensions too much. But so long as the support facilities are in place, those assets can be on the island within a day if needs be.

That will massively cut down on response time and the sheer number of assets it can bring to bare in any stand-off.

Sure other nations will be able to move ships and assets about, so long as they don't enter into Chinese territorial waters, China is not trying to claim the entire SCS as its territorial waters after all.

However, far more so than before, China will have uncontested military dominance of the area.

Previously, an uneasy equilibrium existed whereby everyone knew that any of the other side could potentially destroy or capture all of their bases and installations if they so wish. China had the raw military might to punch through any defenses any of the other nations could hope to put up, while the other nations had the advantage of geography, whereby they could strike before Chinese reinforcements could arrive from mainland bases.

This island base will change all that once complete, because while all the other garrisons and installations from the Philipines and Vietnam will still exist because of Chinese sufferance, the reverse will no longer be true, in that China will be able to deploy enough military assets on the island to easily see off any attempted attacks by others on current Chinese holdings and be close enough at hand to be able to intercept them before they could attack.

Indeed the superiority will then be uncontested and the way will be open to work together on other matters.

Ease up children.
No way China is going to provoke any of its neighbours, leave alone the international community, by building a military fortress in contested waters.
Bad move for P.R. for any nation depending on international trade.
So let's get realistic; until now only a marginal bit of reclamation is going on; barely sufficient to install a permanent residence for a company-strength force and a medium sized pier with (possibly) some storage facilty.
Wishfull elaboration: what if they were to reclaim the entire Southern tip?
Then they could construct a truly long (up to 3km long!) runway.
But as on woody's I don't see China packing that Island with military; to provocative a move.
Just some research buildings and a hotel to host visitors.
(Although with the underlaying threath: If things do get rough, we can get fighterplanes and soldiers in faster than you can!)

even 5 km2 would be big enough, I doubt it would cost China $5B, China is very efficient in building infrastructure.

Ford class super carrier is roughly 337m x 78 m or 0.26 km2 ... so 5km2 is almost 20x in size and unsinkable

I'd like to see China to install a micro nuke plant there ... 25MW ... would be ideal

This one ....

Zetageist said:

The reclamations at other reefs are practice runs for the reclamation at Fiery Cross Reef, the real game changer. Once the south western part of island is built (the military installation area), this would spelled the total domination of SCS by the PLA and the end game for other claimants unless US can maintain an actual military base in Philippines, and Soviet/India in Vietnam.

According to an article:

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"The artificial island would be at least twice the size of the US military base on the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia and cover some 90 square kilometres or over 50 square miles."

The image and the quote are not from the same source, but I assume the quote was referring to the final island.

The image looks like it is from CJDBY.NET Even if the image source were not official, with unlimited resource for the 'Core Interest' of China, I believe they could eventually reclaim the entire much larger atoll.

If you look at the map of Spratly Islands, Fiery Cross Atoll is really perfect strategic location to build a huge military base: central - could cover the entire Spratly Islands group, no other claimants' islands or atolls nearby, and right next to west shipping lanes.

That is it, game over for everyone else...

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I don't believe it will be 90 km2 .... do you guys know that Manhattan island size is "only" slightly less than 60km2?

no way it will be 1.5x the size of Manhattan island ... don't believe it

5 km2 is more realistic size and more than enough