– Aviation Week – Drive fast enough down the well-built coastal road in Barangay Buenavista, a stone’s throw from the waters of Ulugan Bay on the Philippine island province of Palawan, and you might miss the doorstep for a future amphibious invasion force. Were China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and marine forces ever to be tasked with teaching the Philippines a “lesson,” much as Deng Xiaoping taught such a lesson to Vietnam and its former Soviet ally during a brief 1979 war, that coastal road provides a crucial western access that would put PLA mechanized forces about an hour north of Palawan’s capital of Puerto Princesa.