The U.S. and international community would not recognize China's attempt to set up a no fly zone over the South China Sea, a top Air Force general said Wednesday.

China has indicated it may declare an "air defense identification zone" or "ADIZ" that would give the Communist nation control of the airspace over the South China Sea and require any aircraft to get Chinese permission before entering the area.

But the head of Air Combat Command, Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, said the U.S. and its allies would continue to respect international law.

"Freedom of movement, freedom of flight in international airspace is something that we exercise all the time," Carlisle told reporters on Capitol Hill. "We do it when we fly assets all over the Pacific, we do it all over the world; other nations do as well."

China has claimed much of the South China Sea as its own territory, drawing protest from other nations in the region including Vietnam and the Philippines. The Chinese have also constructed artificial islands and runways in the area, such as in the Spratly Islands chain.

On July 12, the United Nations International Court of Justice, located at The Hauge in the Netherlands, rejected China's territorial claim to the sea, and said there was no justification for China's attempts to take over areas either considered to be international water or controlled by other Asian nations.

The Chinese government quickly rejected the ruling, and the vice foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin, told reporters in Beijing that China might set up an ADIZ in response.

The U.S. government has refused to recognize China's territorial claims, and the Navy has routinely sent warships through the South China Sea to support freedom of movement through the area.

Likewise, China's attempts to claim the airspace wouldn't change U.S. Air Force plans, Carlisle said.

"If they declared ADIZ then we would continue, over international airspace, to conduct operations that we feel are within the bounds of legality like we do now," the general said. "It's international airspace and we'll fly airplanes within international airspace within the rules of international law."

He compared it to the Chinese attempts in 2013 to set up an ADIZ over the East China Sea, an area bordering Japan and South Korea.

"We flew a B-52 right through the middle of it," Carlisle said. "That was pre-planned. It wasn't because they declared the ADIZ. It was because it was already planned and we we're going to move it."

Appearing before a hearing of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, Carlisle warned lawmakers that China is trying to rapidly close the gap in capability between their aircraft and the Air Force's.

"Our adversaries have seen how successful we are," he said. "They've watched what's happened over the past 25 years, and they know if we dominate the airspace that we can win any conflict. They know that and they're trying to counter that."

Carlisle pointed to aircraft like the Chinese J-31, which bears a striking resemblance to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

"People know what we can do when we have air dominance and they're trying everything in their power [to copy that]," he said. "If we stay at our current technology, then we're just seeding that ground to our adversaries and we can't afford to do that."

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