Fighters planes over Shanghai (cont): Back to DEFCON5

According to a Shanghainese friend (whose name I’m omitting because, really, how much good can it do a Chinese citizen to be seeing discussing anything fighter-plane related with a foreign journalist?), the planes I saw zooming overhead recently were probably just on a training mission from a local air field.

Sure enough, a quick check with Google Earth shows an obviously- military airfield just north of town, on Chongming Island at the mouth of the mighty Yangtze.

 (Obviously military? The absence of anything resembling a terminal building or an access road would be one clue. The blast shelters are another. So as not to get in deeper here, I won’t give the lat/long reading in Google Earth, but from the link above it’s not hard to find. Also, you can start in downtown Shanghai and move north to see the island. Theme for another day: I don’t know what, exactly, governments like China’s could do to thwart Google Earth. But it is amazing the things that governments would presumably like to keep private that this new view of the world reveals.)

I also don’t know why I hadn’t seen or heard such any fighters before, but it’s good to know that this is just practice. So it’s back to DEFCON5, which contrary to prevailing Hollywood usage is actually the lowest stage of alert. DEFCON1 is when it’s time to run for the shelters.