Is PLA’s response to Dutch warship ‘putting down a marker’ in South China Sea?

The PLA’s Southern Theatre Command, which oversees the South China Sea, accused the frigate De Ruyter of “illegally entering” waters near the Paracel Islands

on Wednesday and repeatedly sending a helicopter into Chinese airspace.

Chinese air and naval forces had issued verbal warnings as well as using unspecified electronic “countermeasures” to “drive the aircraft away”, the People’s Liberation Army command said.

China has never mentioned “electronic interference” in previous statements about encounters with US and other foreign warships

or planes in the South China Sea.

Fu Qianshao, a former air force pilot turned military analyst, said this was a “very serious form of warning” but “of course, not the most serious”.

He added: “This can involve transmitting electromagnetic signals to disrupt an adversary’s communications, radar or sensors – either through broad-spectrum barrage jamming or by targeting specific frequencies and wavelengths.”