While America is preoccupied with the Middle East, evidence accumulates that China is actively preparing for the launch of a war with Japan.  Just over a week after I wrote this article on evidence of China’s preparations for an attack, Janes on 22 January published this image from 13 October 2014 of the helipads under construction in the Nanji Islands:

The image shows the construction of ten helipads with trenching around them.  The trenching would be for individual fuel lines to each helipad.  This is an expeditionary helipad complex.  Flights of ten helicopters would fly in from the mainland, refuel as quickly as possible, and then fly on to the Senkakus. 

This kind of refueling arrangement is done only if you are going to war.  In about 1937, a Royal Air Force pilot visiting a German airbase realized that a war was coming when he saw the refuelling points around the airbase’s apron. 

The first place that the Chinese helicopter attack will be spotted from is the new Taiwanese radar station on Leshan Mountain (24° 30’N, 121° 04’E).  This is the most powerful Pave Paws radar built to date.  It can see 3,100 miles into Chinese airspace and, for example, detected a North Korean missile launch before Japan did.

Seeing helicopters landing and taking off at the Nanji Islands, 200 miles north of Leshan, would be a easy.  Raytheon provides maintenance for the radar under contract, and it is understood that the United States is getting the feed from it. 

The Janes article is wrong in saying that the closest Chinese airbase to the Senkakus is at Luqiao (28° 33’ N, 121° 25’ E).  The Shuimen airbase (26° 56’N, 120° 05’E), built on a ridge farther south specifically for this conflict, is a few miles closer.  The Nanji Islands are equidistant between them.

David Archibald, a visiting fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014).