MANILA – Through its littoral monitoring stations, the Philippine Navy (PN) can now monitor the country's vast territorial waters even without having naval ships on site.
This was said Tuesday by PN chief Vice Admiral Giovanni Carlo Bacordo when asked by reporters on how the Navy managed to detect and monitor the activities of two Chinese survey ships off Recto Bank sometime last week.
"They were detected by our littoral monitoring stations, these have software and applications that can monitor beyond the horizon even if they cannot monitor it from (the) site," Bacordo said in a mix of English and Filipino.
Based on reports, one of two Chinese survey ships has already left and was replaced with another one.
Asked on whether there are plans to accost the ships off Recto Bank, Bacordo said this is the call of the operational commander which has jurisdiction over the area.
Recto Bank is under the jurisdiction of Naval Forces West.
"That is the operational commander's call, you have to base it on the availability of vessels, the current disposition of vessels or aircraft, and their present mission also," Bacordo said. (PNA)
