I suspect we will have the opportunity to find out.
The P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane was sent in a couple of days ago because the PLA and its Navy and Air Force had unsuccessfully tried to crash one or as many as possible among the Global Hawk unarmed strictly surveillance drones operating in international air space by electromagnetic pulsing and other jamming technology that failed utterly and miserably. The Poseidon is even tougher to take down.
Yesterday Australian PM Abbott confirmed B-1 stealth bombers to be stationed at an AFB outside of Darwin. The United States is going in on this and we are going to pull the trigger at the appropriate time.
The CCP Boyz in Beijing want to turn the South China Sea into their own private lake when in fact $5 Trillion of trade passes through the SCS annually to include ME oil to Japan, S Korea, Taiwan, the Phils and to the PRC itself. The US a couple of years ago fully achieved its sought after capability to conduct a standoff blockade of the entire PRChina seaboard from Shanghai to Hong Kong if this SCS Cold War stuff continues to escalate.
The far right also needs to stop underestimating Prez Obama because this is the US Navy and the US Air Force in the new Pentagon doctrine of integrated Air-Sea Battle. It's not the past decades of the US Army bless 'em cause I was one (long ago), stuck in some foreign ****hole place ruled by tribal warlords, corrupt criminals controlled by terrorists and tangled in intra-Muslim slaughter. This one is at sea and it's the PRChina.
The CCP Boyz in Beijing know that before they can become a global power they must first become a regional power and everyone in their region is adamantly opposed, from Japan, S Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, Vietnam, Malaysia, India.....the United States.
The number three guy at DepState was welcomed to Indonesia late last week to say the following in Jakarta: "As China seeks to make sovereign land out of sandcastles and redraw maritime boundaries, it is eroding regional trust and investor confidence," said US Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin Wednesday while on a diplomatic trip to Jakarta, Indonesia.
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Daniel Russell told a press briefing on Thursday that the reconnaissance flight was "entirely appropriate," and that the US would "continue to fully exercise" its right to operate in international waters and airspace. "Nobody in his right mind is going to try to stop the US Navy from operating -- that would not be a good bet," he said.