The U.S. Navy is preparing to confront China with a security risk: the case of a Chinese jet attack on an Australian air force jet

The root cause of maritime security issues is the provocative and dangerous moves of the US. China wants the United States to stop dangerous provocations, and stop blaming China, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Milley said that the number of Chinese intercepts at sea and in the air have increased over the past five years.

The strong comments from Milley underscore the Biden administration’s efforts to make countering China a key strategic priority, and they come as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears to be preparing to lead a congressional delegation to Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own territory.

The US military believes a Pelosi trip could pose a security risk, according to President Joe Biden. The Pentagon has declined to say if officials have directly briefed the California Democrat, but officials say worries include China establishing a no-fly zone or increasing unsafe intercepts of US and allied ships and aircraft in the Pacific region.

Milley wants a detailed understanding of the interactions between the two militaries, particularly those that could be deemed “unsafe” due to the proximity of Chinese aircraft or ships to US military assets.

In February, the Australian government said that a Chinese ship used a laser to illuminate an Australian Air Force jet and that it was a serious safety incident.

The Australian Defence Force said in a statement that acts like this can endanger lives and that it strongly condemns the conduct of the military. Laser attacks have left pilots with a variety of effects, ranging from dizziness to light sensitivity and even temporary blindness.

Drilling through the South China Sea with a Taiwanese Military Aircraft, Marine Arms and U.S. Forces

“Indo-Pacific countries shouldn’t face political intimidation, economic coercion, or harassment by maritime militias,” Austin said in a keynote speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier defense conference.

China frequently challenges military aircraft from the U.S. and its allies, especially over the South China Sea, which China claims in its entirety. A 2001 in-air collision resulted in the death of a Chinese pilot and the loss of a plane.

The US does not recognize these territorial claims and routinely conducts operations there, including freedom of navigation operations through the South China Sea.

The incursions were made by 42 J-10, J-11, J-16 and Su-30 fighter jets, two Y-8 maritime patrol aircrafts, a KJ-500 early warning aircraft, as well as a CH-4 and a WZ-7 military drone, according to the Taiwanese defense ministry.

The flights, part of a so-called “strike drill” according to China’s military, follow Naval exercises by a Chinese aircraft carrier group in the Western Pacific close to Japan on Friday.

Taiwan, a 24 million square foot democracy, is considered part of the territory of the Communist Party of China. It has long vowed to “reunify” the island with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary.

A defense modernization program for Taiwan was included in the bill signed Friday by President Joe Biden.

“The cooperation between Taiwan and the United States will help safeguard a free, open and stable Indo-Pacific region. The military will continue to strengthen military preparedness based on enemy threats and self-defense needs,” it added.

Though still describing them as “infrequent actions,” the US Navy reported an uptick in unsafe intercepts by Chinese fighter jets last summer; in December 2022, a Chinese fighter jet flew just 20 feet in front of the nose of a US Air Force RC-135 surveillance plane carrying 30 crew over international waters in the South China Sea, forcing it to swerve to avoid a collision. This was just five weeks after the meeting between President Biden and President Xi in Bali during a G20 Summit — a meeting in which they pledged new mechanisms to stabilize the bilateral relationship.

Climate cooperation talks are expected to be resumed as part of a broader set of agreements between Biden and Xi, with China previously halted talks as a result of Pelosi visiting Taiwan.

“Unsafe” maneuvers in the Okinawa area of the Pacific Ocean, according to the US Department of Defense and Self-Defense

According to Japanese authorities, China conducted a series of military drills near the southern island of Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean last Friday.

The Chinese navy’s Liaoning aircraft carrier, as well as two destroyers and a frigate, sailed about 560 kilometers (about 348 miles) east of Kitadaito Island, located off Okinawa’s east coast, on December 21, according to Japan’s Joint Staff. The vessels sailed about 120 kilometers east of Okinotorishima on December 22.

Then on Friday, around 180 carrier-based fighter jets and helicopters took off and landed on the Liaoning aircraft carrier, according to Japan’s defense ministry.

Japan’s Ministry of Defense and Self-Defense Forces responded by dispatching two escort ships to collect information and carry out warning and surveillance, the ministry said.

Tensions between China and Japan have also been rising steadily, with Beijing growing its naval and air forces in areas near Japan. China also claims the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited Japanese-controlled chain in the East China Sea.

A new national security plan was unveiled by Japan this month that signaled the biggest military increase since World War II, as well as a shift from the country’s constitution to combat growing threats from China, North Korea and Russia.

Performing what the US military deemed an “unsafe maneuver,” a Chinese navy J-11 fighter jet flew within 20 feet of the nose of a US RC-135 Rivet Joint, an unarmed reconnaissance plane with about 30 people on board, forcing the US plane to take “evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision,” according to a statement from the US Indo-Pacific Command issued on December 28.

A US Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint with 30 people on board was close to being hit by a Chinese Navy J-11 fighter jet. In response, the RC-135 had to take “evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision,” INDOPACOM said in a statement Thursday.

The majority of aircraft interactions are conducted in a safe and professional manner, according to the official. The US uses diplomatic and military channels to communicate with Beijing when the situation is determined to be unsafe.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Joint Force will fly, sail, and operate in international airspace with due regard for its safety, as well as free and open the region, the statement said.

The United States and others believe that China is harassing military aircraft and ships in the East China Sea off the Chinese coast and as far away as the Horn of Africa, where China operates a naval base.

The US/China Satellite Satellite Intercept: What’s Happening to China, What Happens to the US and How Does it Happen?

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.

The Chinese jet appeared to be in the wrong place, and there was no reason for it to get close to the American plane, according to aviation and military experts contacted by CNN.

The 135 is not a military aircraft. Why does the PLAN consider it necessary to intercept carrying missiles when the intent was to visually identify the aircraft? Doing this is potentially dangerous and could lead to a major and tragic incident,” Layton said.

“The intent of the interception was presumably to visually identify the aircraft and the fighter could have stayed several miles away and competed that task. Getting close doesn’t bring any gains, he said.

The Chinese response is very far away from reality. An airliner-sized aircraft can’t turn into an armed fighter.

But Hopkins also said the US military risked blowing the incident out of proportion in saying the US jet had to take “evasive maneuvers,” a term he described as “overly dramatic.”

The driver adjusting her position to avoid a lane incursion by another driver is the same thing. The US response is a pure form of theater and creates an exaggerated sense of danger.

“Flying aircraft close to each other at 500 miles per hour with unfriendly intentions is generally unsafe,” said Blake Herzinger, a nonresident fellow and Indo-Pacific defense policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/03/china/us-china-south-china-sea-intercept-intl-hnk-mic-ml/index.html

The 2001 US-PYN Collision in the Xisha Islands: A Failure of the PLA and Implications for the Relations with China

“It’s worth remembering that the PLA has effectively wrecked any kind of hotlines or discussion forums for addressing potential incidents with the United States. There are less options for senior officers if an intercept goes wrong.

A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a press conference on Friday that the incident was the latest in a series of US provocations that threaten the stability of the region.

The Chinese Southern Theater Command said the US reconnaissance jet was flying “in the vicinity of China’s southern coastline and the Xisha Islands” – known in the West as the Paracels – where Beijing has built up military installations.

The most memorable example is the presidency of George W. Bush. Two Chinese fighter jets harassed a US navy plane over international waters in 2001. One collided with the EP-3 and crashed. The pilot of the plane was able to regain control of his plane and make an unauthorized landing on China’s Hainan Island. Some crew members were held for 11 days and had to be questioned by US officials before being released.

Editor’s Note: Beth Sanner is a former deputy director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration, a position where she oversaw the elements that coordinate and lead collection, analysis, and program oversight throughout the Intelligence Community. In this role she also served as the president’s intelligence briefer. She is a professor-of-practice at the Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland and a CNN national security analyst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

Without such a framework by which to measure and calibrate our actions toward China, we risk going overboard — inflicting significant harm to US interests, including undermining relationships with key allies and hamstringing benign US business activity with China. I understand why Americans were alarmed by the balloon, but there are much bigger threats posed by China. There are gaps in our air defense and detection systems which would have allowed us to shoot down the balloon before it ever reached US land, but political one-upmanship is dangerous when relations with China are at stake.

In late 2016 the Chinese seized an underwater vehicle for the US Navy that was just 50 nautical miles from Subic Bay in the Philippines and hundreds of miles from China. (Subic Bay was home to the largest US naval base in Asia until disagreements over leasing costs led to a withdrawal in 1992; ironically, US sailors might soon return to the base following Manila’s recent decision to allow a greater, albeit rotational, US military presence in the Philippines as a counter to Chinese aggression.) It was widely believed that the incident was a message to President-elect Donald Trump, just two weeks before he takes office and just weeks after he angered Beijing by taking a call from Taiwan’s president. Beijing agreed to return the craft three days later, but never apologized and accused the US of spying.

Had any damage or loss of life resulted when China downed the unmanned US craft, Chinese authorities would have quickly placed both blame and liability on the US. Protests would have erupted in front of the US Embassy and China’s Ambassador to the US swiftly withdrawn.

My first reaction to the Chinese balloon when it was identified floating over Montana was probably the same as yours: “Shoot it down, already!” But in my decades as a senior intelligence official, my role in such circumstances was to focus on the facts, not the outrage, highlighting the intelligence community’s knowledge — and the gaps in our understanding — and providing a measured, clear-headed assessment. In meetings probably held in the White House Situation Room multiple times over the past week, a senior intelligence official would have joined the US military, level-setting the discussion in this vein. The decision to shoot down the balloon was driven by the risk of a debris field in shallow US waters, so I think I will buy the risk-benefit calculus that made the decision.

If you listen closely, you will hear the war drums beating as we approach the 2024 election and I want to hear the hyperbole to reach new heights. But let’s not let China-bashing become a new brand of McCarthyism, particularly when considering the already-dangerous rise in anti-Asian rhetoric and violence reported in the US in recent years.

Let us come up with a plan to hold China accountable but also allow time for needed dialogue. If we follow Beijing’s example it will make it difficult for us to avoid a military conflict with China.

Peter Bergen is the national security analyst for CNN, as well as a vice president at New America and a professor at Arizona State University. Bergen’s book is “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

It reminded me of when my father worked on a program to send balloons into the Soviet airspace, while he was a lieutenant in the US Air Force.

In 1954 he was assigned to Headquarters Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. There he worked on the “Grand Union” project, which deployed balloons that carried cameras over the then-Soviet Union. The spy balloons came from Turkey.

My dad didn’t talk about this part of his career much, likely because the work was secret, but the program has long since been declassified since it happened around seven decades ago.

Maxar Technologies and the Pentagon All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (ADAO): Experiments of a Spy Balloon History Bergen

Indeed, balloons have been used as spying devices since the late 18th century. Some of Napoleon’s soldiers used them in the 18th century. In the US Civil War, Union forces used balloons to track Confederate armies; there was even a Union Balloon Corps.

Now the United States and its rivals have these new-fangled gizmos called “spy satellites,” which can take photos! They can do full-motion video! They can take thermal imagery to see people at night. The skies can be pretty clear, with a resolution of centimeters.

Indeed, commercial satellite imagery is now getting so inexpensive that you can go out and buy your own close-up images of, say, a Russian battle group in Ukraine. The business that Maxar Technologies built up was acquired two months ago for $6 billion by a private equity firm.

It may help explain part of a little-noticed report published by the US Office of Director of National Intelligence last month.

More than 500 reports of unknown objects in the sky over the past two decades were examined by the report. These reports were assessed by the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, a fancy name for the office that tries to examine UFO sightings.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/opinions/spy-balloon-history-bergen/index.html

Why is the Chinese explanation of the F-35 hijacking report “baseless” and if it’s part of a wider surveillance program?

China has done worse. US officials say that it has been helped by the work of hackers who stole design data about the F-35 fighter aircraft, as well as by the Chinese government’s use of personal information of more than 20 million Americans. China denied responsibility for the OPM hacking but called the F-35 theft report “baseless”.

CNN has asked the Chinese Embassy in Washington for comment on the suggestion that the balloon that was shot down is part of a wider surveillance program.

A number of those flights have been within US airspace, but only one has been over US territory, according to one official.

And not all of the balloons sighted around the globe have been exactly the same model as the one shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, that official and another source familiar with the intelligence said. Multiple “variations” are what these people said.

The link to the broader surveillance program, which was uncovered before the latest balloon was spotted last week, was first reported by the Washington Post.

The source who is familiar with the FBI operations noted that the intelligence community is interested in learning whether the equipment on the Chinese balloon bears any resemblance to technology built by the US intelligence community and military, as the Chinese government has been aggressive in stealing American defense secrets.

The investigators are likely to look at the digital signatures it emitted in order to see if there is a way to track this kind of balloon in the future. The commander of US Northern Command, Gen. Glen VanHerck, told reporters that there was a “domain awareness gap” that allowed past balloons to cross into US airspace undetected.

The vessel was thrown off course by a weather balloon but China offered a rare expression of regret over it.

Several defense officials and other sources briefed on the intelligence have said that the Chinese explanation of the balloon’s path isn’t credible.

The team of agents, analysts, engineers, and scientists is responsible for creating technical measures to be used against the US adversaries.

OTD personnel are responsible for managing court-authorized data collection and work to defeat efforts by foreign intelligence agencies to penetrate the US, even though they are also responsible for creating and constructing surveil devices used by FBI and intelligence community personnel.

But, according to one member of the House Intelligence Committee, “there’s number of reasons why we wouldn’t do that. We want to collect off it, so you need to see what it is doing.

The US has procedures in place to protect sensitive locations from overhead snoopers, according to a defense official.