Pentagon cites more than 180 incidents of aggression against US aircraft over the East and South China seas
The US has accused China of orchestrating a “concerted” campaign of dangerous and provocative air force manoeuvres against US military planes in international airspace, warning it could spark an inadvertent conflict between them.
The Pentagon said aggressive tactics by Chinese aircraft had threatened US planes flying over the East and South China Sea regions, tallying more than 180 such incidents since autumn 2021.
“That’s nearly 200 cases where (Chinese) operators have … discharged chaff or shot off flares or approached too rapidly or close to US aircraft,” said Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defence for Indo-Pacific security affairs.
If they were in international waters?
The issue here is that China has claimed an absurd amount of the South China Sea as their territory, which flouts international norms. For perspective, their claim is to an extent equivalent to if the US claimed the entire Gulf of Mexico was US waters.
If this is where it’s happening, then China is absolutely in the wrong.
That’s not at all what the disputed area in question is. The dispute is over an island that Japan occupied from 1898-1945, which was then in US care while still inhabited by Chinese citizens, and eventually the US gave it to japan in the 70s. This isn’t the same as the dispute China has with Vietnam and the others in the area. This specific incident was not in that area, and though I’m sure at least some of the 180 intrusions we’ve made into Chinese airspace were in that territory, we’ve seen nothing to suggest such from this article.