Recently, the Philippines again sent two supply vessels, the 4409 ship "Cabra" and the 4411 ship "Cape Inguano", from Palawan Island to the Second Thomas Shoal, but they were stopped 14 nautical miles away from the Second Thomas Shoal.
After a brief stop in the waters off Sembin Reef, the two supply ships saw no hope of heading to Second Thomas Reef and had to return to the supply base in Palawan. The Philippine Navy's mission to resupply the old warships beached at Second Thomas Shoal failed again.
It has been almost four weeks since the last Ren'ai Jiao incident, and the task of supplying the Filipino soldiers of the old warship at Ren'ai Jiao has not been completed for four weeks, and the Filipino soldiers on the ship are about to go hungry, and the Philippine military is in a hurry. They released information to the outside world that the Philippine transport ship was not transporting supplies to the old warship, but was transporting the wounded to the old warship at Ren'ai Jiao, and was preparing to take the wounded to Palawan Island for treatment.
It may be possible to deceive outsiders into deceiving these deceptive nonsense, but I am afraid that no one will believe them.
The Philippine Navy has sent about 10 marines to stay on the old warship for a long time, and the old warship has long been in tatters, while the Philippine soldiers have changed one after another, but the old Philippine warships and soldiers have never left.
In the past two years, the Philippine military has used various methods to quietly transport steel plates, steel bars, steel bars, paint, electric welding machines, and other building materials and equipment to the ship in small fishing boats at night, repairing the old warship, and re-welding steel bars and laying steel plates on the rusty and porous deck. The sides of the hull were reinforced with steel plates, and the hull was freshly painted.
It seems that the old Philippine warship can hold out for a while at Ren'ai Jiao.
From recent aerial photographs, we can see that the old warship Sierra Madre, which was originally empty and wide, is now densely packed with various temporary buildings and living facilities, in addition to water storage towers, cranes, simple houses and tents, new flagpoles, additional surveillance cameras, and 32 solar panels on the right side of the deck to ensure the power supply on board. The deck was also littered with a large number of blue unidentified barrels, etc. On the deck is a rubber dinghy. Approximately 90% of the deck area is covered by these buildings and temporary facilities.
In the middle of the deck, under the crane, the Philippine military has opened a new material passage on the side of the ship, using the channel and crane to facilitate the transportation of materials from Palawan Island to the ship, and a hard-hulled inflatable speedboat that can take 8 people is tied to the steel pipe outside the channel, and there are two rubber boats moored on the inside of the speedboat.
Two years ago, in addition to the broken ship, there were no such speedboats and rubber boats moored here for a long time, and the Philippine military left the rubber boats here, in addition to transporting supplies, but also to provide convenience for the soldiers stationed when they escaped?
However, judging from the existing repair of the old warship and the new facilities, the Philippine military has spared no effort and indeed made a little money, as if they have turned the old warship into a boat village, and only the fishermen can be stationed here, which can be turned into a sea fortress or fishing village.
However, after the "6.17 incident", supplies from the Philippines could not be transported, and fishermen naturally could not be stationed. The Philippine military wants to turn the old warship into a village or a fishermen's base, which may be more difficult than climbing to the sky.
However, we must also make a plan in advance to strictly prevent the Philippine military from turning the old warship into a reef fort at sea, and even more so, we must prevent the Philippines from migrating to the old warship and build the old warship into a second resettlement base for the Philippines. The first immigration base is Thitu Island, which has immigrated 200 people from the Philippines many years ago, and it is difficult to drive it away.
The Thitu Island migration incident must not be allowed to repeat itself on Ren'ai Jiao.
Comparison of the old warship Sierra Madre in the Philippines before and after
Aerial photography of the reef of Second Thomas Reef
The Chinese fishing fleet conducts fishery production at Ren'ai Jiao