SUPREME Court (SC) Senior Justice Antonio T. Carpio has alerted the government that the reported plan of China to install a radar station in the disputed Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal could be part of its air-defense identification zone (Adiz) at the West Philippine Sea.
Carpio said the installation of an environmental monitoring station at the shoal may be part of its radar coverage of the West Philippine Sea.
“A radar station on Scarborough Shoal will immediately complete China’s radar coverage of the entire West Philippine Sea. China can then impose an Adiz, or air, defense identification zone, in the area,” Carpio pointed out.
He reiterated that the shoal is part of the Philippine national territory, and that the country has sovereignty over it.
Carpio noted that China has just completed building its radar stations in the Subi Reef, Mischief Reef and the Fiery Cross Reef, which are composed of concrete hexagonal structures with retractable roofs to house missile batteries.
“China will use its HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles to enforce the Adiz. These missiles are now installed on Woody Island in the Paracels,” Carpio disclosed.
HQ-9 is China’s medium- to long-range active radar homing surface-to-air missile system similar to the Russian S-300 and the American Patriot systems.
“The Chinese will, of course, also use these same military installations to enforce the 9-dash line as China’s national boundaries at the West Philippine Sea. That means China will grab 80 percent of the Philippines’s exclusive economic zone, and 100 percent of Philippine extended continental shelf in the West Philippine Sea,” he added.
Carpio recalled how China built in 1987 a radar weather station on the Fiery Cross Reef (an outcrop in the Spratlys just a meter above water) ostensibly to help the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s global oceanic survey.
But about two years ago, it turned the weather station into a 270-hectare military air-naval base.
Because of this, the SC justice called for a stronger response from the government against China’s plan.
“These developments call for a national debate and consensus, on how the nation should proceed with its bilateral relations with China,” he suggested.
Carpio was part of the legal team that presented the country’s case against China’s reclamation in the West Philippine Sea before the United Nation’s Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2015.