As soon as the Philippines and the United States began to hold joint military exercises, the PLA launched an operation in the sea and air outside the Philippine Subic Bay military port, which made it impossible for the Philippine and US militaries to escape the PLA's "eyes in the sky" whenever they were ready to take action in the South China Sea.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. gained "confidence" after the US-Japan-Philippines summit and openly "drew a red line" against China on the South China Sea issue, clamoring that as long as a Filipino soldier is killed by any country, the US-Philippines mutual defense treaty may be triggered, leading the United States to intervene to "defend the Philippines". As a result, the Philippines has stepped up its actions to challenge China's sovereignty in the South China Sea. However, the PLA's operations in the sea and air outside the Philippine Subic Bay military port have eliminated the opportunity for the Philippines and the United States behind it to fire the first shot.
(Photo of the flight of the Wuzhen-7 taken by a Filipino reporter)
According to the information of the international aircraft tracking website, overseas open-source military intelligence analysts found that the PLA's Wuzhen-7 high-altitude long-endurance drone has long been active in the South China Sea, but there has been no direct evidence.
Until a few days ago, a journalist in the Philippines took a set of photos of the People's Liberation Army Wuzhen-7 reconnaissance plane flying over the South China Sea, 55 kilometers from Subic City, Zambales Province, Philippines, proving that the open-source information is true. The photos show that the airspace where the Wuzhen-7 flew was just outside the 12-nautical-mile airspace of the Philippines, which is international airspace, and our aircraft has the right to fly there.
In fact, open source information shows that the PLA's Wuzhen-7 reconnaissance aircraft often flies in this airspace, and this is still the case that our side has turned on the aircraft tracking equipment, and no one knows how many times it has not been opened. The key point is that the airspace where the Wuzhi-7 appeared this time is exactly between Scarborough Shoal and the mouth of Subic Bay, and not only are the US and Philippine ships entering and leaving Subic Bay in full view, but any Philippine ship that tries to approach Scarborough Shoal will be monitored by this Wuzhi-7.
Our netizens may have a retrospective question: Why in the past year or so, every time the Philippine government intends to engage in some "small moves" in the South China Sea that provoke China's sovereignty, the Chinese coast guard and Chinese fishing boats have been able to deploy in the relevant waters in advance? The answer is that we have a powerful intelligence system, and in addition to a large number of satellites that can monitor key waters in the South China Sea in real time, the regular flight of long-endurance unmanned reconnaissance aircraft such as the Wuzhen-7 has also contributed to it.
(Subic Bay Naval Base during the Cold War)
Subic Bay Naval Base is a large naval base built by the United States during the colonial period of the Philippines, and became the largest overseas military base of the United States Navy during the Vietnam War, and one of the most important forward bases for the United States to invade Vietnam. However, after the end of the Cold War, the importance of the base was greatly reduced, and because of the protests of the local people due to the reckless human life of the US military in the Philippines, the US military withdrew from the base in 1991 after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, not far from Subic Bay, caused damage to some of the base's facilities. The Philippine government reactivated the base in 2016 and deployed some warships. In late 2022, a U.S. investment firm purchased some of the port's real estate, and then the Philippines and the U.S. reopened the base to U.S. forces under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. In the future, the Subic Bay Naval Base will surely become a springboard for the US Navy to intervene in the South China Sea.
(Filipino reporters found the approximate location of Wuzhen-7 this time)
The opening of Subic Bay faces the South China Sea, and the geographical location is very important, and the PLA uses high-altitude, long-endurance, Wuzhen-7 unmanned reconnaissance aircraft to conduct real-time reconnaissance and monitoring of the military port, which is equivalent to controlling every move of the Philippine and US sides from the source, and is a "preemptive strike" that does not need to fire the first shot. Moreover, Subic Bay is facing China's Scarborough Shoal, where the PLA will deploy its reconnaissance forces, which is also a practical application of the concept of active defense.
Compared with strategic high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, the reconnaissance function of satellites does have shortcomings in real-time. The image reconnaissance satellite is greatly affected by the light and weather, and in order to avoid the shadow of the ground object affecting the target recognition, it can basically only take pictures at noon on a cloudless day.
Although synthetic aperture radar imaging satellites are not subject to weather and light images, they have poor resolution, only black-and-white images, and the time period of overheading a specific target is fixed every day, and the cost of temporary orbit change is very high. Therefore, in order to cope with the rapidly changing situation in the South China Sea, the PLA dispatched reconnaissance planes, especially unmanned long-endurance reconnaissance planes, which are less likely to cause conflicts, are very necessary supplements.
As a result, whenever the Philippine military and coast guard want to take action against islands and reefs in the South China Sea, the PLA can discover them as soon as possible, and then share the information through other naval and air reconnaissance and command platforms. No matter what ships or planes the Philippines dispatches and what kind of actions it intends to implement, we can know in advance and then act according to the prepared response plan.
As a result, the threat of the Marcos Jr. government in the Philippines will be difficult to achieve, because China has always held the initiative and can handle every confrontation with ease, while at the same time having sufficient strength and intelligence support to ensure that the situation does not get out of control.