A Chinese warplane maneuvered near a US military reconnaissance aircraft operating over the South China Sea.
A Chinese fighter pilot performed “an unwarranted aggressive maneuver” near a US military reconnaissance aircraft operating over the South China Sea, the US military said on Tuesday.
The incident comes at a time of already high tensions between Beijing and Washington over issues like Taiwan or the flight of a Chinese balloon over US territory in late 2022.
The Chinese aircraft flew “directly ahead of and within 120 meters of the RC-135’s nose on Friday, forcing the US aircraft to cut through the turbulence in its wake,” the Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. (IndoPacom) of the United States Army.
An increasing type of event
The RC-135, a military reconnaissance aircraft, “conducted routine operations safely over the South China Sea and within international airspace in accordance with international law”, IndoPacom added.
Video images made public show a fighter plane passing in front of an American plane, which can be seen shaken by the turbulence resulting from this passage.
A senior US military official speaking on condition of anonymity said there was “an alarming increase in the number of interceptions and risky aerial confrontations at sea” by Chinese aircraft and ships.
Such acts “may create an incident or a dangerous miscalculation”, he added.
“We do not consider that (these interceptions) are carried out by pilots operating independently,” the senior official clarified, also indicating: “we believe that this is part of a larger repeated pattern”.
Meetings for a thawing of tensions
A similar incident involving a Chinese fighter jet and an American RC-135 had already taken place in December, forcing the American plane to “perform evasive maneuvers to prevent a collision”, IndoPacom said at the time.
The news of this latest incident comes a day after the Pentagon claims that Beijing has declined a US invitation to host a meeting this week in Singapore between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart Li. Shanfu. But, according to the senior US official, the two announcements are unrelated.
Lloyd Austin and other US officials are working to strengthen US alliances in Asia to counter Beijing’s increasingly assertive moves in the region, though both sides have also at times played appeasement.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Vienna in May. And United States President Joe Biden recently indicated that relations between Washington and Beijing should “very soon” relax.