The East Sea Strategic Situation Monitoring Initiative (SCSPI), headquartered in the Chinese capital Beijing, said on February 26 that the USNS Impeccable reconnaissance ship operated near Vietnam’s Paracel Islands from
`Such frequent tracking positions are unusual for a reconnaissance ship in the East Sea area,` SCSPI posted on Twitter.
The US Department of Defense has not commented on this information.
The US reconnaissance ship USNS Impeccable is docked at Subic port, Philippines, February 2018.
On the same day, Chinese media reported that the Southern Theater Command of the country’s military held live-fire exercises to deal with missile attacks in `distant seas`.
The exercise included the destroyer Ngan Xuyen, the corvette Hanh Duong, the landing ship Ngu Chi Son and the logistics ship Tra Can Ho.
The US Navy recently sent ships to the East Sea to conduct more frequent freedom of navigation patrols to challenge China’s unreasonable sovereignty claims.
Observers say the activities of US warships in the East Sea show that President Joe Biden’s administration will not scale down its activities to challenge China’s claims in the East Sea, after free patrol campaigns.
When asked about the US warships approaching Vietnam’s Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagos in February, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said on February 25, `Vietnam wants other countries to continue
Ms. Hang emphasized maintaining peace, stability, order, security, safety, freedom of navigation and aviation, respect for the law, respect for sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction of nations.
Impeccable is the only ship in the class of reconnaissance ships of the same name, commissioned by the US Navy in March 2001.
In March 2009, five Chinese ships approached the Impeccable when a US reconnaissance ship operated in the southern area of Hainan Island, forcing then-US President Barack Obama to order the destroyer USS Chung-Hoon to protect the Impeccable.