A Chinese warplane fired flares in front of a Canadian military helicopter over international waters of the South China Sea last Sunday, an operation that Canadian military officers said was reckless and could have resulted in the downing of the aircraft. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe risk to a helicopter in that instance is the flares moving into the rotor blades or the engines so this was categorized as both unsafe and non-standard, unprofessional,\u201d said Maj. Rob Millen, air officer aboard the Royal Canadian Navy frigate HMCS Ottawa, the warship from which the Sikorsky Cyclone helicopter was flying. <\/p>\n
He said that Canada and other nations have seen Chinese aircraft get close to fixed-wing aircraft on numerous occasions, but it was rare to see such action taken against a helicopter. <\/p>\n
The first incident was over international waters outside of 34 miles from the Paracel Island chain in the northern part of the South China Sea. The second was also over international waters outside of 23 miles from the Paracels. The warship was operating in international waters 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of the Paracels at the time. <\/p>\n
The Canadian helicopter was searching for a previously detected submarine when the incidents occurred, officers aboard the Ottawa said. <\/p>\n
Millen said he was piloting the Canadian helicopter earlier in the day, when Chinese J-11s intercepted it at close range while it flew straight and level at 3,000 feet above the water back toward the Ottawa, a signal to that it had no hostile intent. <\/p>\n
In that earlier encounter,\u00a0Millen said the Chinese fighters flew in circles around his helicopter. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the intercepting aircraft was closer and closer, at a certain point it became unsafe,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
His helicopter experienced turbulence coming off the Chinese jets, also posing a danger to the copter, Millen said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI certainly am not as comfortable as you can be based on the fragility of the rotor system,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Millen said he ended that encounter by descending to 200 feet, an area where the helicopter can operate but is \u201cvery uncomfortable for fast air fighter jets.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Canadian air force major said his military\u2019s air crews train on how to respond to such intercepts as occurred on Sunday and will continue to fly over the international waters of the South China Sea. <\/p>\n
Asked about the interception at a regular press briefing on Friday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin replied: \u201cI\u2019m not aware of the situation you mentioned.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have reiterated many times our firm position on Canadian warplanes conducting reconnaissance near China\u2019s territorial airspace,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cWe hope Canada will refrain from its inappropriate behavior to avoid the situation from becoming more complicated.\u201d <\/p>\n
China claims historic jurisdiction over almost the entirety of the vast South China Sea, and since 2014 has built up tiny reefs and sandbars into artificial islands heavily fortified with missiles, runways and weapons systems \u2013 sparking outcry from the other claimants. The Paracels, called the Xisha Islands by China, are in the northern part of the South China Sea, east of Da Nang, Vietnam, and south of China\u2019s Hainan Island. <\/p>\n
The 1.3-million-square-mile waterway is vital to international trade, with an estimated third of global shipping worth trillions of dollars passing through each year. It\u2019s also home to vast fertile fishing grounds upon which many lives and livelihoods depend. <\/p>\n
In 2016, an\u00a0international tribunal\u00a0in The Hague concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea. China has ignored the ruling. <\/p>\n
Major western powers frequently conduct passage across the sea in order to assert that the region is international waters, sparking Beijing\u2019s ire. <\/p>\n
The Ottawa had been patrolling the waterway since last Monday, at times operating with United States, Australian, Japanese and New Zealand naval vessels and aircraft in a multinational exercise dubbed Noble Caribou. However, it was operating alone when the encounters with the Chinese jets. <\/p>\n
The Ottawa and the US Navy destroyer USS Rafael Peralta overnight Wednesday into Thursday local time continued their deployment into the Taiwan Strait, another\u00a0international\u00a0waterway\u00a0and vital shipping channel\u00a0that has seen tense
encounters between PLA and allied vessels. <\/p>\n
Last June, the US Navy reported a close encounter between the destroyer USS Chung-Hoon and a Chinese warship during a Taiwan Strait transit, in which the US warship slowed down to avoid colliding with the\u00a0Chinese navy vessel that cut in front of it. The Canadian frigate HMCS Montreal was accompanying the US ship at the time, and a news crew aboard it recorded the incident. <\/p>\n
Then Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu blamed the US for ratcheting up tensions in the region when questioned by reporters at a defense conference in Singapore. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey are not here for innocent passage, they are here for provocation,\u201d Li said of US warships. <\/p>\n
Li said if the US and other foreign powers did not want confrontation, they should not send their military assets near China. <\/p>\n
\u201cMind your own business,\u201d Li said, adding, \u201cWhy did all these incidents happen in areas near China, not in areas near other countries?\u201d <\/p>\n
This week\u2019s passage of the allied warships through the strait was uneventful, however, with no contact reported. <\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s incidents come after other reports of unsafe intercepts of allied aircraft in the recent days. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday, a PLA fighter jet came within 10 feet of a US Air Force B-52 bomber flying over the South China Sea, the US military said. <\/p>\n
And earlier in October, a Chinese fighter jet came within five meters (16 feet) of a Canadian CP-140 reconnaissance and surveillance plane over the East China Sea. <\/p>\n
That incident was recorded by news crews aboard the Canadian aircraft and witnessed by\u00a0Maj. Gen. Iain Huddleston, the commander of Canada\u2019s 1st Air Division,\u00a0who was also on the plane. <\/p>\n
Huddleston called the intercept \u201cunprofessional\u201d and \u201cvery aggressive\u201d in a report from Radio Canada, which was on the plane. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Canadian aircraft was subject to multiple close-proximity manoeuvres by a PLAAF aircraft that put the safety of all personnel at risk,\u201d Canada\u2019s Defense Ministry said in a statement. <\/p>\n
China\u2019s Foreign Ministry said the Canadian plane illegally entered Chinese airspace and accused the Canadian military of sending \u201cwarplanes halfway around the world to stir up trouble and make provocations at China\u2019s doorsteps.\u201d <\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the Pentagon\u2019s top official in charge of security in the Indo-Pacific, Ely Ratner, said\u00a0that the US has seen more instances of \u201ccoercive and risky\u201d behavior from\u00a0Chinese pilots\u00a0against US aircraft in the last two years over the East and South China Seas than in the entire decade before that. <\/p>\n
\u201cSince the fall of 2021, we have seen more than 180 such incidents,\u201d Ratner said.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s a centralized and concerted campaign to perform these risky behaviors in order to coerce a change in lawful US operational activity.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
A Chinese warplane fired flares in front of a Canadian military helicopter over international waters of the South China Sea last Sunday, an operation that Canadian military officers said was reckless and could have resulted in the downing of the aircraft. \u201cThe risk to a helicopter in that instance is the flares moving into the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11120,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}