Five Chinese warships have been spotted in international waters off the coast of Alaska.

(VERO BEACH, FL) Five Chinese warships have been spotted in international waters off the coast of the Bering Sea near the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.

The armed flotilla has been under observation by US military elements for several days, TASS reports.

The White House is aware of the Chinese warships, and the Pentagon has not registered any threatening activity, even though the same five Chinese warships came within 12 miles of the US coastline during President Barack Obama’s visit to Alaska in September 2015.

The Chinese warships have been lurking off the coast of Alaska since a 2015 joint-Russian naval exercise conducting “innocent passage”, where ships are permitted to enter territorial waters and are not challenged so long as they keep moving directly and expeditiously.

According to U.S. Officials, the Chinese warships were doing operations “consistent with international law” under the maritime rule of “innocent passage,”

U.S. Northern Command — whose area of responsibility includes all air, land and sea approaches to the continental U.S. and Alaska — told CNN they were not aware of any communications between the U.S. and Chinese military during the passage.

On December 6th 2011, Chinese newspapers reported that Chinese leader Hu Jintao allegedly ordered the PLA Navy’s command to “prepare for a war” during a meeting of the top military and political leadership of the country, In the meeting Hu Jintao said in the coming years the Chinese Navy should “complete its modernization, gather all the forces to prepare for a war and strengthen national security.”  Foreign experts pointed out at the time that journalists may have made a mistake in the translation of Hu Jintao’s statement. But Pravda emphasized that statement was bold regardless of the specific translation, noting a report from British analysts which said that the statement could be translated from Chinese both as “armed struggle” or “military conflict”.

Speaking with Pravda Report, a Russian intelligence state media outlet, Konstantin Sivkov, Captain of the 1st Rank and the first vice-president of the Academy of Geopolitical Issues, gave context to President Hu Jintao’s statement.

Sivkov said:

”At the moment, in terms of the power of the Navy, China is far behind the United States. For example, it has only one aircraft carrier, while the Americans have 12 active nuclear aircraft carriers alone. Nuclear-powered submarines that China has are too noisy and noticeable for the American systems, and the radius of their ballistic missiles is only 1,700 kilometers, which is clearly insufficient to provide an adequate response. However, in the next 10 years such imbalance will be reduced significantly.”

Sivkov then added three ways the Chinese would excute their plan:

“First, the Chinese are preparing to launch several nuclear aircraft carriers.

Second, they are qualitatively and quantitatively increasing its nuclear submarine fleet. The existing noisy submarines will be replaced with new nuclear submarines that will be difficult for the Americans to track. In addition, their armament will strengthen significantly. Now the Chinese are actively working towards creating a new sea-based ballistic missile with a range of eight thousand kilometers, which would dramatically reduce the chances of Americans for a favorable outcome in a possible collision.

 

Third, the Chinese are preparing to dramatically increase the number of other warships, including destroyers and frigates. All these are not empty promises, and every year it will be increasingly more difficult for the Americans to contain China.”

Between 2011 and 2016 China has greatly expanded their plan to modernize and deploy their military assets around South-East Asia, moving equipment and infrastructure onto the Spratley Islands in 2015, and deploying their sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, as far as the Syria’s Mediterreanian