A Chinese fighter jet came within 10 feet of a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber over the South China Sea this week in a nighttime maneuver that nearly caused a collision, the United States military said on Thursday. The U.S. military also released a grainy, black-and-white video that it said showed the encounter.
Chinese officials have previously depicted Chinese air intercepts of U.S. aircraft as reasonable responses to foreign military patrols that threaten the country’s security. But the Indo-Pacific Command’s statement on Thursday said that the latest near miss was part of a “dangerous pattern of coercive and risky operational behavior” by Chinese military jets against U.S. aircraft in international airspace over both the South China Sea and the East China Sea, which separates China from Japan.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/world/asia/china-jet-us-b52-bomber.html