The U.S. military has declassified a spate of videos and images showing Chinese fighter planes flying dangerously close to U.S. aircraft in the East and South China seas, as tensions between Washington and Beijing continue to grow.
At a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, the Pentagon’s Assistant Secretary for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner told reporters that U.S. planes in the East and South China Seas experienced over 180 encounters with Chinese aircraft in the past two years, more than occurred in the preceding two decades.
“This is yet another disturbing sign of the [People’s Liberation Army’s] coercive and risky operational behavior,” Ratner said. “The skill and professionalism of American service members should not be the only thing standing between PLA fighter pilots and a dangerous, even fatal accident.”
The videos and images depict encounters that occurred in 2022 and 2023. Many show Chinese jets flying mere feet from U.S. aircraft and performing maneuvers that force U.S. pilots to perform risky defensive maneuvers to avoid collisions. Others show Chinese pilots taking pictures of the U.S. jets and using explicit language against American pilots.
In the briefing, Ratner pointed to an incident in January, when a Chinese fighter jet approached a U.S. military aircraft while flying hundreds of miles per hour, clearly armed, closing in to just 30 feet away, as an example of provocative and risky behavior from Chinese aircraft.
The release of the videos and images comes amid worsening tensions between the two countries. Communication between the two militaries have frozen over since the U.S. downed a Chinese spy balloon in February.
The Chinese government maintains it was a weather balloon that deviated off course due to changing weather conditions and rejects the claims that it was collecting intelligence.
In a sign of the tensions, Chinese officials rejected a proposed meeting between Chinese defense chief Li Shangfu and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a summit in Singapore in June.
