By Greg Torode and Poppy McPherson
HONG KONG/BANGKOK, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Light attack aircraft and military vehicles have arrived at the new China-Laos joint training facility announced last Tuesday, according to satellite images reviewed by Reuters.
The images, taken by commercial satellite provider Vantor, show what security analysts believe are eight K-8 light attack jets and more than two dozen support vehicles on a runway that is still being built — China's latest expansion of its overseas military
presence.
Taken on September 30, the day after China's defence ministry announced it had set up the facility at Ban Keun outside the capital Vientiane, the images also show extensive construction work around the runway.
The swift development of the new facility is being closely watched by regional military attaches and security scholars, some of whom say its construction potentially marks China's first fully fledged overseas military base in Southeast Asia.
Despite more than 20 years of intense military modernisation, China is widely perceived to lack a strong network of overseas facilities beyond the South China Sea, port access in Ream, Cambodia and a logistics base in Djibouti.
Rachel Vandenbrink, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the selection of Ban Keun for a facility that the People's Liberation Army could access "is likely more about a target of opportunity than filling an obvious operational need."
"Laos does have some geostrategic value as an accessible foothold in mainland Southeast Asia, given its shared border with China and infrastructure links, including (its) railway," Vandenbrink said.
The Chinese defence ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.
The Lao embassy in Bangkok and the Lao foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
COVERT US AIRFIELD DURING VIETNAM WAR
Singapore-based security analysts Collin Koh and Alexander Neill, as well as Vantor specialists, said the planes appeared to be Hongdu JL-8 aircraft, which both the Chinese and Lao air forces operate.
Also known as the K-8, the two-seater aircraft is extensively used for training as well as having light attack capabilities. It was jointly developed by China and Pakistan and is exported to other militaries.
Laos currently has four of the planes, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies' annual assessment of the world's militaries. Koh, a scholar at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, described the Laotian planes as being of "questionable serviceability".
As construction continues, diplomats and analysts are keeping watch for any sign of air defences, ammunition and fuel storage as well as surveillance facilities — all of which could point to the base serving broader military functions beyond training.
Neill said while the airfield looked relatively short and innocuous at present, it could in future serve larger aircraft, including signals intelligence and electronic-surveillance planes to extend China's reach into Southeast Asia.
"It looks like the airfield has been engineered to accommodate a runway extension allowing larger aircraft to operate," said Neill, an adjunct fellow at Hawaii's Pacific Forum think-tank.
In helping Laos build up Ban Keun, China is now occupying a site the US used covertly at the height of the Vietnam War.
During the US war against communist forces in Laos in the 1970s, Ban Keun was an airfield known as "Lima Site 44" used by Air America, an airline discreetly owned by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to records shared with Reuters by Ryan Wolfson-Ford, a Southeast Asia specialist at the Library of Congress.
The airline carried American-backed troops from the country’s Hmong highland minority as well as supplies into rough mountain airstrips known as "Lima Sites".
As early as 1968, Ban Keun was used as a point from where Air America helicopters delivered Hmong troops to other combat zones, said Dr Joachim Leeker, an academic who has written about the history of the airline.
(Reporting By Greg Torode in Hong Kong and Poppy McPherson in Bangkok; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
