Close Encounters at Sea: The USNS Impeccable Incident

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Close Encounters at Sea: The USNS Impeccable Incident

R. Pedrozo

On 23 March 2001, the hydrographic survey ship USNS Bowditch (T-AGS 62) was conducting routine military survey operations in China's claimed exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the Yellow Sea when it was 'aggressively confronted' by a Chinese Jianheu III-class frigate and ordered to leave the EEZ. Being an unarmed naval auxiliary vessel, Bowditch changed course and left the area as instructed. A few days later, the U.S. embassy filed a strongly worded diplomatic protest with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Bowditch returned to the area of the encounter, this time with an armed U.S. escort, to continue its mission. Eight years and a new U.S. administration later, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has once again taken aggressive, unsafe, and unprofessional action against an unarmed naval auxiliary vessel -- this time the ocean surveillance ship USNS Impeccable (T-AGOS 23) -- that was engaged in lawful military activities in China's claimed EEZ. On 8 March 2009, five PRC vessels -- a navy intelligence ship, a government fisheries-patrol vessel, a state oceanographic patrol vessel, and two small fishing trawlers -- surrounded and harassed Impeccable approximately seventy-five miles south of Hainan Island in the South China Sea. The fishing trawlers maneuvered within twenty-five feet of Impeccable and then intentionally stopped in front of it, forcing Impeccable to take emergency action to avoid a collision. The U.S. government protested the PRC's actions as reckless, unprofessional, and unlawful.