Thank God for the US Navy. We have had a tiff with China for the last month, who had up to 200 fishing vessels parked at our Juan Felipe reef. It's another takeover play, as they have done before on Mischeif reef. The difference now is, this reef is withing the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. Duterte wont send our own Navy ships, just 'Coast Guard observers'.
Duterte is already sold out to China for their 'help' donating vaccines. See how that works? Thus is the pathetic state of our leadership. I came on here last week imploring any US observers to give a hand. Phils is strategically important, but Duterte does his fair share to piss off the US military. Fortunately there is still an agreement in place between our two countries, which he didn't kill. It allows the US MIL to park supplies and ordnance at 6 locations around Phils, like a placeholder.
As of Sunday it looks like the CVN-71group is going to loiter for a while in the 'south china sea', aka 'west philippine sea'. Perhaps in the future we would be smart enough to actually park some of our own assets and people on the damn reef, rather than just leave it empty and waiting for the Chinese, without so much as a flag pole.
Thank you, Alliance team, thank you DJT, thank you US Navy. Philippines Patriot out.