China’s maritime patrol ships deployed a suspected sonic weapon against Philippine government vessels on Saturday as they sought to obstruct a Philippines supply mission.
The assault using unspecified “acoustic devices” allegedly inflicted “severe temporary discomfort” on Philippine crew members, Manila said, and was accompanied by sustained water cannon blasts as well as maneuvering that risked a collision.
The incident happened near Scarborough Shoal, one of the most contentious features in the Philippines and China’s long-running territorial feud in the South China Sea since the latter achieved facto control there in 2012 by force.
China continues to block Philippine fishermen from accessing traditional fishing grounds at Scarborough Shoal, while the Philippines says it is their right to fish there under international law. Philippine fisheries bureau boats were attempting to deliver humanitarian supplies, including food and fuel, to the waiting fishermen.
Can’t wait for one of these Chinese sailors to get shot over this bullshit just for the CCP to act all surprised and victimized. Pricks.
Their behaviour suggests they want an escalation. If the Philippines responds with lethal aggression to the very dangerous and irresponsible ‘non-lethal aggression’ of the Chinese navy. This will provide China some PR/diplomatic cover to grab land/sea from the Philippines.
They are doing this because they want to use violence. But they don’t want the sanctions unprovoked aggression would lead to. Even if no one believes China it leaves an excuse to continue trade with China as it grabs land.
Unprovoked land grabs have caused many sanctions to be applied to Russia. However, Israel is grabbing land in Gaza without sanctions because the Hamas attack preceding the land grab gives Israel diplomatic cover. Even though many people believe Israel new about Hama’s planned attack earlier, deliberately reduced security and there are even accusations the Israeli government funded Hama’s prior to the attack.
I agree that they do seem to be fishing (couldn’t help myself) for casus belli
I think it’s really time that China and Russia get a proper teaching in some kind of way. This fucking around without any major consequences needs to end.
Fool us thrice🥢
I was thinking the same thing. Both of them have a loud bark, but if stood up to by a strong adversary (I’m thinking a coalition of strong powers, or a USA that is willing to go toe to toe and not through smaller proxies like Ukraine or the Philippines) they would most likely back down. Sure, they would play the victim and continue to bark, but would know where the line is. Right now they both are testing limits.
Fuck the CCP
I don’t know what WW3 will be fought with, but WW4 will be fought with glorified supersoakers and loud music.
What a mean thing to say about Chinese pop music. Only like 7 of the top 10 songs this year are “sonic weapons” that cause “severe temporary discomfort.”
What were they using? LRAD?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The assault using unspecified “acoustic devices” allegedly inflicted “severe temporary discomfort” on Philippine crew members, Manila said, and was accompanied by sustained water cannon blasts as well as maneuvering that risked a collision.
Ships belonging to China’s paramilitary maritime militia fleet engaged in unsafe maneuvers and “deployed what is understood to be a long-range acoustic device” against the government vessels, the multi-agency National Task Force of the West Philippine Sea said Saturday.
Sometimes known as “sonic cannons,” acoustic devices have been adopted as non-lethal defensive weapons by a number of militaries, as well as crowd control tools by some police forces.
The U.S. State Department, which said China’s use of the sonic weapon showed a “reckless disregard for the safety and livelihoods of Filipinos,” didn’t respond to a request seeking further details about the nature of the acoustic devices.
A second confrontation occurred on Sunday near another hotly disputed South China Sea feature—Second Thomas Shoal—as Chinese ships sought to head off the Philippines’ latest supply mission to a grounded warship where a group of sailors are based.
A minor collision also occurred when a Chinese coast guard vessel allegedly maneuvered into the path of another Philippine supply boat, although the latter managed to continue on its mission.
The original article contains 709 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The sonic weapon was sonar, I get that they were being dicks and it could have caused harm, but words do matter and saying they used a sonic weapon makes one think of an actual weapon with the intent of being used as a weapon rather than something being used in a dangerous way.
Do you have a source for that? Because, as this article says, based on the effects it is suspected that it was a sonic cannon.
It was all over lemmy not long ago. I googled “Chinese sonar” and here’s the first related article from Popular Mechanics. They weren’t the first to publish, but most news is copied from others anyway:
google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+sonar
PM: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a45976112/chinese-warship-injures-australian-divers-with-sonar/That’s describing a completely different incident. This one was not against Australian divers, it was against Philippine ship-board personnel.
from what I recall, they were both in the area doing something together, but it could be a different incident
Your article is from November 30. The incident this article describes happened December 9th.
