HONG KONG _ China appears to be deploying weapons systems on all seven of the reefs it has built in the South China Sea, according to photographs released by a Washington-based think tank.
The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative said it began tracking in June and July the construction of identical hexagon-shaped structures to house the weapons on Fiery Cross, Mischief and Subi reefs, where China has already completed military grade airstrips and installed radar.
"It now seems that these structures are an evolution of point-defense fortifications already constructed at China's smaller facilities on Gaven, Hughes, Johnson, and Cuarteron reefs," AMTI, a unit of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on its website.
The installations call into question a pledge made by China's President Xi Jinping not to militarize the disputed islands in the South China Sea, a $5 trillion-a-year shipping route that the U.S. has patrolled largely unchallenged since World War II. China's claims to more than 80 percent of the waters were dismissed by an international tribunal in July. Beijing said it would ignore the ruling.
AMTI said that anti-aircraft guns appear to have been installed on China's four smaller reefs. Although they cannot be definitively identified, they are likely to be "close-in weapons systems" whose function is to detect and destroy incoming missiles and enemy aircraft, it said.
"These gun and probable CIWS emplacements show that Beijing is serious about defense of its artificial islands in case of an armed contingency in the South China Sea," AMTI wrote. "Among other things, they would be the last line of defense against cruise missiles launched by the United States or others against these soon-to-be-operational air bases."
