Territorial Dispute with China: Philippines to Move "Major Forces" to Subic Bay

Philippine Coast Guard buying French patrol ship

"The Philippines said yesterday it was buying a surplus French navy vessel to boost its forces in the South China Sea, where it has a territorial dispute with China.

The 26-year-old Tapageuse is likely to be the first of several French ships that will be acquired by the Philippine Coast Guard as it contends with increasingly assertive Chinese forces.

The 54.8-metre patrol ship will cost €6 million (HK$61.5 million) and is due to arrive in the country by next April, a coastguard statement said.

The ship, which is armed with two cannon and two machine-guns, was inspected before acquisition and is good for 20 more years of service, the coastguard said.

"This French vessel is multi-functional and it would be a major contribution to our fleet, particularly in our search and rescue operations," coastguard chief Rear Admiral Rodolfo Isorena was quoted as saying.

The Philippines is also finalising with the French government the purchase of four brand-new 24-metre and one 82-metre multipurpose vessels, Isorena said."

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1294099/philippines-acquiring-french-vessel-south-china-sea

"Tapageuse" (photographed below) was in service with her sister ship "Railleuse" in Papeete until she was decommissioned last year.

6 Million?
They should have ordered from China...
Could of had 4.

Japan unveils 'largest battleship' since World War II


"Japan has unveiled its largest warship since World War II, to be used in anti-submarine warfare and border-area surveillance missions.

The vessel has a flight deck nearly 250m (820ft) long and can reportedly carry more than nine helicopters.

Its unveiling comes amid tensions with China over islands which both countries insist are theirs.

The Philippines is also bolstering its marine defences by buying a second decommissioned US Coast Guard ship.

President Benigno Aquino on Tuesday welcomed the arrival of the vessel in Subic Bay.

He said it would intensify patrols of the Philippines' exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, where disputed waters have also raised tensions."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23594519

I was chatting to an Australian long term resident of Subic (not a sexpat but an entrepreneurial type with a maritime background) and he remarked that he had gone on board HMS PEACOCK when she and her sister arrived in the Philippines as a gift from Britain following the hand over of Hong Kong in 1997. He said that when she arrived she was spotless and every tool in the engine room was in its place, with full racks of spares. Six months later everything had gone. When he was last aboard, even the vice had gone.

"Ramon Alcarez" photographed yesterday at her berth in Subic Bay. The mariners among us may not be too impressed by the arrangement of her mooring lines!

A refreshingly different approach, but not one that I would choose to imitate. A supply of the Admiralty Manual of Seamanship would not go amiss.

One of my cousins' last jobs as a RN Captain was to supervise the hand-over of HMS Peacock, HMS Plover and HMS Starling to the Philippine Navy and their sister ships HMS Swallow and HMS Swift to the Irish Navy. He recalls visiting one of the ships a few hours before she set sail for the Philippines and noticed that one of the two chronometers had been removed from its gimbal mounts and was mounted on a bulkhead in the captain's cabin! Although the RN did remove certain sensitive equipment prior to hand-over, the ships were in every other respect completely equipped, even down to complete sets of up to date Admiralty charts for the area.

Only in the case of the French Navy!

That causes me almost physical pain.

Mind you, whatever were the RN doing outfitting a ship with TWO chronometers - ONE or THREE but never, ever, two. If you have one, you rely on it. If you have three, and one starts to develop its own idea of what the time is, you can see that the other two are still "in line" and identify the miscreant. If you have two chronometers, and one plays up, you cannot tell which the "good" one is and which the "bad" one is.

But frankly all that stuff dates back to Lecky's Wrinkles. In practice you get a time signal or these days you just note the time from one of your GPS units!

Some of these tails remind me of a joke that a an old expat told me recently about some Swiss study, an American, a Brit and a Filipino.....

I don't know about CNC but every P&O ship I served on had two chronometers which were checked daily against a time signal and the deviation recorded in a record book and in the ship's Log Book.

Oh, dear me; might do for the P&O, but that would never ever do for Blue Funnel!

Ah, no wonder you know so much about Alfred Holt - you're a Blue Flue man!

The Swires the Holts and the Scotts were and are very closely connected, starting in 1862 when John Samuel Swire, a Liverpool cotton broker suffering the lack of cotton caused by the Union blockade of the Confederacy, decides to visit China to see if cotton can be found there. He is friendly with the Scotts,as in Greeenock shipyard, who have just finished building Alfred Holt's first three ships, and they suggest that he ask Holt for a passage to Shanghai. Holt agrees, Swire gets to Shanghai, finds no cotton but writes to Holt (no cable then) saying that his Shanghai Agents are useless and he, Swire, can do better - Holt writes back appointing him and Butterfield and Swire, initial staff four people, is in business. Ten years later Swire forms the China Navigation Company as a feeder service for the Blue Funnel Line, with Holt as a shareholder, CNCo goes on to build iirc 126 ships at Scotts, and the rest, including Cathay Pacific, is, as they say, history...

In much more recent times Blue Funnel owned 50% of CNCo for a while and CNCo was re-organised on Blue Flue principles...down to and including the Chronometer Rate Book.

US, Philippines to open troops talks amid China threat

MANILA: "Philippine officials say they will soon begin negotiations with the United States on a larger American military presence to help deter what they say is increasing Chinese aggression in Philippine-claimed waters in the South China Sea.
In a letter to Philippine congressional leaders, the secretaries of national defense and foreign affairs said that allowing American troops to have an “increased rotational presence” will help the country attain a “minimum credible defense” to guard its territory while it struggles to modernize its own military, one of Asia’s weakest.
A larger American presence would also mean more resources and training for responding to disasters in a nation often battered by typhoons and earthquakes, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said in their letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday.
“The Philippines will shortly enter into consultations and negotiations with the United States on a possible framework agreement that would implement our agreed policy of increased rotational presence,” Gazmin and del Rosario said."

http://www.arabnews.com/news/460624

China Tests Japan on Island Claims After Philippine Success


"China deployed ships to waters near islands disputed with Japan for a record 28 hours, drawing a formal protest as it repeated a strategy of pressing its territorial claims through bolder projections of maritime power.
Ships from China’s newly formed coast guard remained in the Japanese-controlled waters for the longest time since Japan bought the islands last year, Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a briefing in Tokyo today. Japan’s Foreign Ministry summoned a Chinese diplomat and “sternly protested,” he said."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...st-after-ships-approach-disputed-islands.html

Talks begin to boost US troop presence

"The Philippines and the United States begin talks tomorrow to increase the rotational presence of American troops in the country, including bigger deployment of aircraft, ships, supplies and troops for humanitarian and maritime security operations.

Malacañang said the negotiations would be within the parameters of the Constitution as well as of the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Mutual Defense Treaty of 1951.

The Philippines and its former colonizer are gearing up for an expanded military cooperation amid China’s growing aggressiveness in staking its claims over vast areas in the West Philippine Sea and South China Sea."



http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/08/13/1084541/talks-begin-boost-us-troop-presence

I am detecting a fairly steady rise in anti-Chinese feeling. In particular, there is a new tendency to associate the Chinese with the NPA. If indeed an NPA unit is found in possession of Chinese weapons, the balloon will be well and truly up. There is also a new tendency to criticise Chinese illegal mining.