A Chinese fighter jet came within 10 feet of a US Air Force B-52 bomber flying over the South China Sea on Tuesday, according to the US military.
The Chinese pilot “flew in an unsafe and unprofessional manner, demonstrated poor airmanship by closing with uncontrolled excessive speed, flying below, in front of, and within 10 feet of the B-52, putting both aircraft in danger of collision,” US Indo-Pacific Command said in a Thursday statement. “We are concerned this pilot was unaware of how close he came to causing a collision.”
News of the latest Chinese intercept comes as President Joe Biden is expected to speak with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi when he visits the White House on Friday, CNN reported on Thursday. It is not clear whether the meeting will be a formal discussion or a more informal meet and greet. Wang is also expected to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday and national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday.
If nothing else, the fighter could lock their weapons at the Chinese fighter jet and make them sweat a bit.
As I understand it, a “weapons lock” is mostly about deliberately pointing your detectors at a target. The target may notice a spike in radar sweeps but they don’t actually know what the other vessel is doing with that radar information.
It’s kind of like when someone starts staring at you really hard. You get a feeling that they’re probably up to something but you don’t actually know if they’re coming to take a swing at you or if it’s just RBF.
From what I’ve read it’s something that happens fairly regularly. If you want to warn an other military vehicle without escalating to warning shots you flash some targeting sensors at them.
My guess is that the fighter and bomber were targeting each other and that a bunch of land based radars on the Chinese coast joined the party too.
edit: looks like I was wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_lock-on It seems that “lock on” as we know it from movies and video games isn’t a thing with modern military equipment. I suspect the signal intelligence folks still have some thing that tells a pilot, “data suggests that someone may be planning to shoot you”.
Act of war. They don’t do that. That doesn’t happen in real life, that scene from Top Gun was for dramatic effect. They never do that unless they are actively engaged to kill.
I think the US government considers active radar jamming to be an act of war but I’m not aware of any statements or treaties that would make targeting itself an act of war. As I understand it the US and China do it to each other fairly regularly.