US says Chinese fighter pilot carried out ‘unnecessarily aggressive’ manoeuvre over South China Sea

The US has mentioned a Chinese fighter pilot carried out an “unnecessarily aggressive” manoeuvre throughout an intercept over the South China Sea.

In a press release, the US army command answerable for the Indo-Pacific mentioned the Chinese J-16 plane carried out the manoeuvre final week and compelled the US RC-135 airplane to fly by way of its wake turbulence.

Wake turbulence is the disturbance within the environment attributable to an plane because it passes by way of the air, much like the wake of a ship travelling by way of water.

“The United States will continue to fly, sail, and operate – safely and responsibly – wherever international law allows,” the assertion mentioned.

Video exhibits a fighter jet passing in entrance of the U.S. airplane’s nostril and the cockpit of the RC-135 shaking within the turbulence.

The encounter adopted what the United States has referred to as a current pattern of more and more harmful behaviour by Beijing army plane.

The incident befell earlier than China snubbed a request by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to fulfill on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue Asian safety summit in Singapore this week.

The Chinese embassy in Washington has not but commented.

In the previous, China has mentioned that the United States sending ships and plane into the South China Sea isn’t good for peace.

In December, a Chinese army airplane got here inside metres of a US Air Force plane and compelled it to take evasive motion to keep away from a collision in worldwide airspace.

Relations between China and the US have been tense, with friction between the world’s two largest economies over every thing from Taiwan and China’s human rights file to its army exercise within the South China Sea.