Australia has protested against what it described as an “unsafe and unprofessional maneuver” carried out by Chinese pilots over the South China Sea. A Chinese fighter jet reportedly released flares that posed a danger to an Australian military surveillance aircraft.<\/p>\n
Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said on Thursday that a Chinese J-16 fighter jet had released flares just 30 meters (100 feet) away from an Australian P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft in broad daylight and in international airspace on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Australian aircraft typically carries a crew of eight or nine members. Marles stated that “the aircraft was not damaged, and none of the crew members were injured.”<\/p>\n
Speaking to Sky News, Marles added, “The J-16 was so close that there was no way to guarantee the flares wouldn’t hit the P-8.” He continued, “If any of those flares had struck the P-8, they would have undoubtedly caused significant damage to the aircraft.”<\/p>\n
Australia lodged a protest with the Chinese embassy in Canberra and also in Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday.<\/p>\n
In its complaint, Australia accused the Chinese pilots of conducting an “unsafe and unprofessional maneuver that posed a danger to the aircraft and its crew.” The Chinese embassy in Australia did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australia has protested against what it described as an “unsafe and unprofessional maneuver” carried out by Chinese pilots over the South China Sea. A Chinese fighter jet reportedly released flares that posed a danger to an Australian military surveillance aircraft. Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said on Thursday that a Chinese J-16 fighter jet had …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42893,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42892\/revisions\/42893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}