China Surveys Vietnamese Naval Base Using U.S. Satellite Data

Over the past year, Vietnam has accelerated its land reclamation program in the Spratly Islands, building out acreage and enlarging its military bases at a faster pace than any other claimant. At its largest facility on Barque Canada Reef, it has dug out a ship channel large enough to accommodate the largest existing destroyers and cruisers, according to a new paper released by China’s Ministry of Natural Resources. 

The paper, published in the latest edition of the Chinese-language Journal of Tropical Oceanography, describes a method to combine free data …