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| Chinese J-11B that buzzed a US Navy P-8 in 2014 |
By Shannon Tiezzi
A few days after another “unsafe” intercept by a Chinese jet, the US and China finalized rules for aerial encounters.
The Pentagon announced this week that two Chinese fighter jets may have conducted an unsafe intercept of a U.S. surveillance place on September 15. The announcement came just as Chinese President Xi Jinping began his highly anticipated first state visit to the United States.
The U.S. Department of Defense was not nearly concerned by this incident as it was by another intercept in August 2014, which U.S. defense officials denounced at the time as “dangerous.” In the incident last year, the Pentagon accused a Chinese fighter jet of having come within 20 feet of a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft, then doing a barrel roll over the top of the U.S. plane.
The September 15 intercept saw two of China’s JH-7 fighters cross roughly 500 feet in front of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 surveillance aircraft, according to USNI News. Both planes were flying in international airspace over the Yellow Sea, roughly 80 miles off of China’s Shandong peninsula.
Pentagon spokesman Bill Urban told USNI News that the Pentagon was still gathering information on the incident, and that “no final characterization of the intercept has been determined at this time.” It was the crew of the RC-135 that described the intercept as “unsafe,” not the Pentagon itself. Urban also stressed that “at this point there is no indication that there was a ‘near collision’.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat