Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

Channel News Asia
May 9, 2013

Japan has lodged a diplomatic protest with China over an article in a state-run publication that challenged Japan’s ownership of Okinawa, home to major US bases, officials said Thursday.

Japan has lodged a diplomatic protest with China over an article in a state-run publication that challenged Japan’s ownership of Okinawa, home to major US bases, officials said Thursday.

The People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, on Wednesday published a call for a review of Japan’s sovereignty over Okinawa, suggesting that Beijing may be the rightful owner.

The call came as the two countries are already at loggerheads over islands in the East China Sea.

“We have protested both in Tokyo and Beijing over the commentary issued by the People’s Daily, followed by a Chinese foreign ministry comment,” a Japanese foreign ministry official in charge of Chinese affairs told AFP.

“We told them that if the Chinese government shares the position of casting doubt about Japan’s ownership of Okinawa, we would never accept it and firmly protest at it,” he said.

“The Chinese side replied to us that the view in the commentary was solely held by researchers,” he added.

The lengthy article in the People’s Daily argued that the country may have rights to the Ryukyu chain, which includes Okinawa. …

Read on: www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/japan-protests-to-china-over-okinawa-cla/668800.html

Tags: by caab
No Comments »

The Washington Free Beacon
By Bill Gertz
April 1, 2013

China has placed military forces on heightened alert in the northeastern part of the country as tensions mount on the Korean peninsula following recent threats by Pyongyang to attack, U.S. officials said.

Reports from the region reveal the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) recently increased its military posture in response to the heightened tensions, specifically North Korea’s declaration of a “state of war” and threats to conduct missile attacks against the United States and South Korea.

According to the officials, the PLA has stepped up military mobilization in the border region with North Korea since mid-March, including troop movements and warplane activity.

China’s navy also conducted live-firing naval drills by warships in the Yellow Sea that were set to end Monday near the Korean peninsula, in apparent support of North Korea, which was angered by ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills that are set to continue throughout April.

North Korea, meanwhile, is mobilizing missile forces, including road-mobile short- and medium-range missiles, according to officials familiar with satellite imagery of missile bases.

The missile activity is believed to be North Korea’s response to the ongoing U.S.-South Korean military exercises that last week included highly publicized flights by two B-2 strategic nuclear bombers near North Korean territory as part of annual military exercises.

North Korea’s government announced last week that since March 26 its missile and artillery forces have been placed on the highest alert status. …

Read on: http://freebeacon.com/border-patrol/

Tags: by caab
No Comments »

Washington Post
By Associated Press
February 8, 2013

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam — Fighter jets from the U.S. and two key allies roared into western Pacific skies in the combat phase of annual exercises that have gained importance as the region responds to the rise of China and other potential threats.

The Cope North drills — which could soon swell in participants — are aimed at preparing air forces of the U.S., Japan and Australia to fight together if a military crisis erupts. They also send a vivid reminder to Beijing that America’s regional alliances are strong, though officers leading the maneuvers say they are not looking to bait the Chinese military.

“The training is not against a specific country, like China,” Japan Air Self-Defense Force Lt. Gen. Masayuki Hironaka said. “However, I think (the fact) that our alliance with the U.S. and Australia is healthy is a strong message.”

The three allies began flying sorties together earlier in the week around the U.S. territory of Guam in a humanitarian phase of the exercises, dropping emergency assistance in packages that wafted down under parachutes to jungle airfields. On Thursday, fighter jets were joined by bombers, transport planes and tankers that refuel the fighters in midair. For the first time, Japanese tankers were joining the drills. …

Read on: www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/jets-roar-over-pacific-skies-as-us-military-gathers-allies-in-drills-to-keep-ahead-of-china/2013/02/07/6628192e-7193-11e2-b3f3-b263d708ca37_story.html

Tags: by caab
No Comments »

China.org.cn
Xinhua, November 30, 2012

More than 140 residents lived near Kadena air base of U.S. Air Force in Japan’s Okinawa lodged a lawsuit on Friday to try to ban the night and early morning flights at the base and asked for damages payment.

The accusers filed the lawsuit with local court in the city of Okinawa, complaining that they have suffered from aircraft noise which made them difficult to sleep in the night and early morning.

Among other 22,000 plaintiffs of anther lawsuit against such flights, the 144 accusers also asked for a payment of 216 million yen (about 2.56 million U.S. dollars) in damages.

Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima said Friday that he will continue pushing the plan to relocate the U.S. bases outside his prefecture despite a potential change of government after next month’s general election.

Japan and its U.S. alliance are at odds on the issue of removing U.S. Air Force bases in Okinawa to other places for years. But the two sides still can not reach an agreement.

http://www.china.org.cn/world/2012-11/30/content_27275992.htm

Tags: by caab
No Comments »

news24online.com
August 24, 2012

The United States is in discussions with close ally Japan about expanding a missile defence system in Asia, the top US general said.

Gen Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was yesterday commenting on a Wall Street Journal report that the US is discussing positioning an early warning radar in southern Japan, supplementing one already in place in the country’s north, to contain threats from North Korea and to counter China’s military.

The State Department, however, said the missile defense system is not directed against China. Dempsey said no decisions have been reached on expanding the radar.

“But it’s certainly a topic of conversation because missile defense is important to both of our nations,” Dempsey told reporters at the start of a meeting with his visiting Japanese counterpart, Gen. Shigeru Iwasaki, at the Pentagon. Japan has worked closely with the US for several years on missile defense, and has both land- and sea-based missile launchers.

North Korea’s ballistic missiles are considered a threat to security in the Asia-Pacific region because of the risk of conflict erupting on the divided and heavily militarised Korean peninsula, and because of the secretive North’s nuclear weapons program. …

Read on: www.news24online.com/us-missile-defense-for-nkorea-threat-not-china_LatestNews24_1241.aspx

Tags: by caab
No Comments »

USA Today
By Tom Vanden Brook

B-1 bomber mission shifts from Afghanistan to China, Pacific

President Obama’s new military strategy is taking shape here on the sun-seared grasslands of West Texas where B-1 bomber pilots train.

The strategy pivots from missions over the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan to targets on the sea and, though the military doesn’t come out directly and say it, in China. “We’re going back to the future,” says Col. David Been, commander of the 7th Bomb Wing at Dyess. “As the balance shifts from almost exclusively Afghanistan right now, we’re shifting to the Asia-Pacific region.”

After a decade of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — 6,350 Americans killed and more than $1 trillion spent — Obama announced the new strategy in January that looks to counter the rising power of China. The changing role of the B-1 is a prime example of how the Air Force is responding.

Suddenly, the B-1, a plane that once seemed irrelevant after the end of the Cold War, is being repurposed again. First, the B-1 became the workhorse of the air war in Afghanistan. Now, as the Pentagon’s strategic vision shifts to Asia, so too is the B-1 …

Read on: www.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/story/2012-05-11/b-1-bomber-obama-new-strategy/56097706/1

Tags: by caab
No Comments »

Reuters
By Jim Wolf
March 8, 2012

Chinese cyberwarfare would pose a “genuine risk” to the U.S. military in a conflict, for instance over Taiwan or disputes in the South China Sea, according to a report prepared for the U.S. Congress.

Operations against computer networks have become fundamental to Beijing’s military and national development strategies over the past decade, said the 136-page analysis by Northrop Grumman Corp released on Thursday by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Chinese commercial firms, bolstered by foreign partners, are giving the military access to cutting-edge research and technology, the analysis said.

The Chinese military’s close ties to large Chinese telecommunications firms create a path for state-sponsored penetrations of supply networks for electronics used by the U.S. military, government and private industry, it added.

That has the potential to cause a “catastrophic failure of systems and networks supporting critical infrastructure for national security or public safety,” according to the report.

On the military side, “Chinese capabilities in computer network operations have advanced sufficiently to pose genuine risk to U.S. military operations in the event of a conflict,” the report said. …

Read on: www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/08/us-china-usa-cyberwar-idUSBRE8270AF20120308

Tags: by caab
No Comments »

Space.com
by Mike Wall
February 28, 2012

The rise of China’s space program may pose a potentially serious military threat to the United States down the road, top American intelligence officials contend.

China continues to develop technology designed to destroy or disable satellites, which makes the United States and other nations with considerable on-orbit assets nervous. Even Beijing’s ambitious human spaceflight plans are cause for some concern, since most space-technology advances could have military applications, officials say.

“The space program, including ostensible civil projects, supports China’s growing ability to deny or degrade the space assets of potential adversaries and enhances China’s conventional military capabilities,” Army Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, wrote in testimony presented before the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services Committee Feb. 16. …

Read on: www.space.com/14697-china-space-program-military-threat.html

Tags: by caab
No Comments »

Faxts.com
March 4, 2010

So far this year the United States has succeeded in inflaming tensions with China and indefinitely holding up a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia through its relentless pursuit of global interceptor missile deployments.

On January 29 the White House confirmed the completion of a nearly $6.5 billion weapons transfer to Taiwan which includes 200 advanced Patriot anti-ballistic missiles. Earlier in the same month it was reported that Washington is also to provide Taiwan with eight frigates which Taipei intends to upgrade with the Aegis Combat System that includes the capacity for ship-based Standard Missile-3 interceptors. …

If the proposed placement of U.S. missile shield components in Poland, the Czech Republic, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Alaska and elsewhere were explained by alleged missile threats emanating from Iran and North Korea, the transfer of U.S. Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles to Taiwan – and, as was revealed in January, 35 miles from Russian territory in Poland – represents the crossing of a new threshold. The Patriots in Taiwan and Poland and the land- and sea-based missiles that will follow them are intended not against putative “rogue states” but against two major nuclear powers, China and Russia. …

In fact the current U.S. administration has by no means abandoned plans to surround Russia as well as China with a ring of interceptor missile installations and naval deployments. …

…the ring encircling China can also be expanded at any time in other directions….Washington is hoping to sell India and other Southeast Asian countries the Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC)-3 missile defense system. …

Airborne laser anti-missile weapons will join the full spectrum of land, sea, air and space interceptor missile components to envelope the world with a system to neutralize other nations’ deterrence capacity and prepare the way for conventional and nuclear first strikes.

www.faxts.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=436:us-tightens-missile-shield-encirclement-of-china-and-russia&catid=72:politics

Tags: by caab
No Comments »

Digital Journal
January 11, 2010

China’s armed forces successfully tested a system for intercepting missiles in mid-flight on Monday, state media reported.

While China released few technical details of the test, the official Xinhua News Agency said that ”ground-based midcourse missile interception technology” was tested and achieved the expected objective.
”The test is defensive in nature and is not targeted at any country,” Xinhua said.

This test appears to be another step in the intensifying animus brewing between China, and Taiwan. China has repeatedly issued strong warnings against Taiwan after their purchase of United States made arms, including the PAC-3 air defense missiles. China has repeatedly vowed violent means might be necessary in order to bring Taiwan back into the Communist country’s control.

China split with Taiwan during a civil war in 1949 but regularly claims that the self-governing, democratic Taiwan as part of its territory. Beijing has warned of a disruption in ties with Washington if the sale goes ahead, but has not said what specific actions it would take.

China is in the middle of a major technology upgrade for it’s military forces, and missile technology is now considered one of the country’s strengths, and if this test indeed went as well as reported, might put it a step ahead of the United States’ own missile defense technology.

www.digitaljournal.com/article/285473

Tags: by caab
No Comments »