Chinese Jet Flies Within 10 Feet of B-52, U.S. Says

A Chinese language fighter jet got here inside 10 toes of a U.S. Air Drive B-52 bomber over the South China Sea this week in a nighttime maneuver that almost brought on a collision, the US army stated on Thursday.

The pilot of the J-11 jet that drew near the B-52 in worldwide airspace on Tuesday evening “flew in an unsafe and unprofessional method” and with “uncontrolled extreme pace,” the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement.

The U.S. army additionally launched a grainy, black-and-white video that it stated confirmed the encounter. The midair clip, apparently filmed from the bomber, seems to point out the jet drawing perilously shut. The New York Occasions has not independently verified the video.

China had no fast response to the Pentagon’s assertion. Chinese language officers have beforehand depicted the air intercepts as cheap responses to overseas army patrols that threatened the nation’s safety. In June, China’s protection minister on the time, Gen. Li Shangfu, downplayed an earlier episode wherein an American naval destroyer slowed to keep away from a attainable collision with a Chinese language Navy ship that had crossed its path because it moved by means of the strait between China and Taiwan, the self-governed island that Beijing claims as its personal.

Talking at a convention in Singapore, Normal Li stated in June that one of the best ways to keep away from an accident was for international locations outdoors the area, like the US, to go away and “mind your own business.”

However the Pentagon’s assertion on Thursday stated that the newest close to miss was a part of a “harmful sample of coercive and dangerous operational conduct” by Chinese language army jets in opposition to U.S. plane in worldwide airspace over each the South China Sea and the East China Sea, which separates China from Japan.

“The U.S. will proceed to fly, sail and function — safely and responsibly — wherever worldwide legal guidelines enable,” it stated.

China claims 90 p.c of the South China Sea, a few of it hundreds of miles from the Chinese language mainland. It has alarmed a lot of Asia and the US over the previous decade by asserting ever-greater control over the waters, partially by constructing and fortifying outposts and airstrips on disputed island chains.

Claire Fu contributed analysis.