Chatham House/Maxar
Chatham House noted that once the SIAR system is finished, it’ll add to China’s larger surveillance and reconnaissance network in the South China Sea by providing overlapping coverage stretching from Hainan Island on the northernmost edge of the strategic waterway to the Spratlys in the south.
Along with SIAR, “China has built dozens of different types of radars across the Spratlys and Paracels over the last 10 years,” Gregory Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program and Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Business Insider.
“This is an iteration on a long-term Chinese strategy to dominate the sensor space in the South China Sea,” he said.
Last fall, the Pentagon documented growth in China’s intelligence-gathering capabilities in the South China Sea, especially at the Spratlys.
While Beijing has stated the main goals of these projects are to improve marine research, safety of navigation efforts in the area, and conditions for personnel stationed at these outposts, the Pentagon said that the effort also “improves the PRC’s ability to detect and challenge activities by rival claimants or third parties and widens the range of response options available to Beijing.”
US Navy photo illustration by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Aaron Haro Gonzalez
China likely aims to create “these dense networks of overlapping radar coverage as a way to constrain US operations and funnel the US into operating into areas where the Chinese can array different defenses,” Dahm said. Those defenses could be electronic warfare capabilities, surface-to-air missiles, and more.
Dahm said that this is just the latest example of such efforts by China, which has long had the goal of countering and attacking enemy stealth aircraft dating back to observations of how US forces operated during the 1991 Gulf War, in which the stealth F-117 Nighthawk played an important role.
As part of China’s massive military buildup and modernization efforts, it has increasingly emhasized advanced technologies for reconnaissance and information warfare.
Earlier this week, the US Air Force Secretary said that the US and China were locked in “a race for technological superiority” rather than a “classic arms race,” with a focus on advanced satellites, battle management systems to effectively integrate and control combat assets, and artificial intelligence.