Chinese military carry out ‘constructive kills’ on Royal Navy vessels

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1. >Chinese fighter jets performed simulated missile attacks on a British warship as it passed through the Taiwan Strait this month and the Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales was harassed by Chinese warships in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, The Times has learnt.

   >Royal navy officers have shared the first detailed accounts of the passage through the Taiwan Strait of the frigate HMS Richmond, part of the United Kingdom Carrier Strike Group. The Richmond was the object of what are known as “constructive kills” by the Chinese — when a fighter jet performs the manoeuvres necessary to launch an attack but stops short of launching a missile.

   >In the South China Sea, the carrier group, led by HMS Prince of Wales, was closely tracked by Chinese ships as it sailed through the disputed Spratly Islands, some of which have been turned into military bases by Beijing despite the claims of other countries such as the Philippines. A British and a Norwegian ship — the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Tidespring and the Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian frigate — sailed close to one of the islands in a freedom of navigation exercise intended to reject Chinese claims and assert the right to free passage through international waters.

   >Officers on the Prince of Wales said that there was no expectation that the Chinese would actually open fire and that in other ways the forces of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) acted in a “professional” manner and remained at a safe distance.

   >But the PLA’s aggressive manoeuvring demonstrates the extent of the tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the risks run by the carrier group, which has already exposed itself to potential attack by Houthi forces in the Red Sea on its outward journey from Britain.

   >Sub-lieutenant Rohan Lewis, an officer of the watch on the Prince of Wales, said: “The Chinese were trying to harass us, four or five of them trying to get close. They tried to push us a little bit to see how far they can go.”

   >Operation Highmast, as it is called, is due to return to Portsmouth in early December at the end of an eight-month deployment that has taken it through the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, to Oman, Singapore, Australia and Japan. On the way, it has hosted diplomatic receptions, defence exhibitions and conferences and conducted exercises with friendly nations, including Canada, Italy, South Korea, Spain and the United States.

   >Its return journey has taken it through two of the most important flashpoints in the world. China claims the self-ruling island of Taiwan as its own and menaces its democratic government with aggressive air and sea manoeuvres across the 110-mile strait.

   >Beijing also claims nearly all of the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which trillions of dollars of trade passes every year and its coast guard boats have clashed with those of the Philippines and Vietnam.

   >Countries including the US, Australia and Britain dispatch naval ships as a demonstration that they reject Chinese claims and uphold the right of free navigation through international waters. In June, a coastal patrol vessel, HMS Tamar, transited the Taiwan Strait; on September 12, Richmond did the same, with an American destroyer, the USS Higgins.

   >The PLA reacted by accusing Britain and the US of “trouble-making and provocation”. But the Ministry of Defence has so far kept secret the details of the reception that the carrier group faced.

   >The Richmond’s Merlin MK2 helicopter was shadowed by a Chinese counterpart, the Changhe Z-10, as it watched over the ship. The Chinese fighter jets remained at a distance but launched “constructive kills”, dummy attacks that serve as a warning, an expression of disdain and a form of training for the Chinese pilots.

   >“It’s them pretending to kill us,” said an officer on the Prince of Wales. “They follow the path they would go on if they were launching at attack. They gain height, then pull away and turn at 50 degrees. It’s an info-war operation — they want us to know they’re targeting us. We were expecting a reaction but not of a violent nature — we were confident that they wouldn’t really fire a missile.”

   >The Prince of Wales officer agreed that the “constructive kills” do amount to a kind of adversarial training exercise. “It’s mutually beneficial in training terms,” he said. “The more they practise targeting you, the more you understand how they operate.”

   >In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague struck down China’s claims to rocks and reefs close to the Philippines but Beijing rejects any challenges to its sovereignty. Encounters with Chinese forces in the South China Sea can get dangerously physical.

   >They have had numerous collisions with Philippine coast guard vessels around Scarborough Shoal, which both sides claim. In August, a Chinese warship collided with a vessel from its own coastguard while chasing a Philippine patrol boat and crushed its bow.

   >US navy ships frequently sail within the 12 nautical mile zone around Chinese claimed islands. Reflecting the anxieties of their diplomats, British officers are under orders to send a more timid message by staying in the “contiguous zone” between 12 and 24 nautical miles — no different from the course taken by many unarmed merchant vessels every day.

   >In another sign of the softer approach taken by the British government, what the US navy refers to as “freedom of navigation operation”, or Fonops, have been renamed by the Royal Navy with the less assertive acronym Fona — freedom of navigation “activity”.

   >Despite this caution, the carrier group was tracked by Chinese naval ships, including a cruiser, two frigates and a surveillance vessel, as well as vessels of Beijing’s quasi-military coast guard. The Roald Amundsen and the Japanese destroyer Akebono, which are serving as escort ships to the British aircraft carrier, conducted “barrier ops”, interposing themselves to prevent the Chinese vessels from getting too close to it.

   >The Chinese ships broadcast radio warnings in English to the British aircraft and ships, ordering them to leave the area. Many of these were ignored. On occasion, the aircraft responded with a wording carefully approved by a navy legal officer and a political adviser from the Ministry of Defence stationed on the carrier, stating that the jet was in international airspace conducting force protection of military vessels.

   >Officers said they benefited from the hunt for the Chinese submarines that were undoubtedly tracking them in the South China Sea and tested in ways that no training exercise can simulate.

   >“It’s different against a peer threat,” a British officer said. “It’s difficult to tell whether it’s a submarine or a whale — but one wants to kill you and the other just wants to go on being a whale.”

   >Over the past few days the carrier group has taken part in Exercise Bersama Lima, joint training with Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

   >It has met with withering scorn in the Chinese state media. The Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, wrote recently: “For a country that once took pride in colonising many countries and regions and projecting power across the seas, flaunting [Britain’s] aircraft carriers in the Pacific and hyping up militarism over the Taiwan Straits is little more than self-indulgent nostalgia.”

2. Ah yes, the British, known to the Chinese as being a friendly naval force that would never harass Chinese waters and start wars in China or colonize Chinese territory.

3. Would be great to see the warm welcome Chinese warships will receive when patrolling English channel.

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