Chinese fishing boats are blinding US military pilots with lasers

US military pilots have been blinded by lasers in the East China Sea more than 20 times in recent months, marking an aggressive new phase in Beijing’s territorial grab.

IT’S on the very edge of aggression: a flash of light temporarily blinding a combat pilot. It’s China’s new ploy to enforce its expansive new territorial claims.

According to US military sources, some 20 such attacks have been made on its aircrew operating in the East China Sea since September last year.

The most recent attack has been in the past fortnight.

Aviation Week quotes a US Marine source as saying the attacks had come from “a range of different sources, both ashore and from fishing vessels”.

All aspects of the Chinese economy are state-controlled. And its fishing fleets are operated as a militia, working in close concert with Beijing’s navy as it seeks to assert its arbitrary claim to total control of the South and East China Seas.

RELATED: China is ‘jamming’ US aircraft carrier equipment

In this instance, Chinese fishing ships and military-controlled coast guard vessels have been muscling-in on Japan’s Senkaku island chain. Beijing insists the mountainous outcrops belong to China, and has named them the Diaoyu islands.

Tensions over the islands have repeatedly reached flashpoint in recent years, with several tense stand-offs between Japanese and Chinese naval and air forces.

An image from video released by Australian police shows a potentially dazzling laser being pointed at a police helicopter from the ground.

The waterway is, however, part of a busy sea lane carrying enormous quantities of international trade.

A military spokeswoman has told the Wall Street Journal that none of the US aircrew were seriously injured by the attacks. But the temporary blindness and potential for accident-inducing serious eyesight damage was greatly disturbing.

The fresh allegations follow reports earlier this year that China’s expansive new naval and army base in the African nation of Djibouti had also been targeting aircraft operating from a nearby US facility with blinding military-grade lasers.

RELATED: China ‘accidentally’ reveals the design of its third aircraft carrier

The US issued a formal international complaint over the Djibouti attacks. But Beijing denies the accusations as ‘fabricated’.

Chinese foreign ministry stated: “According to what we have learned from the relevant authorities, the accusations in the relevant reports by US media are totally groundless and purely fabricated ... You can remind the relevant US person to keep in mind the truthfulness of what they say, and to not swiftly speculate or make accusations.”

Even commercially available pen-lasers have the potential to blind low-flying pilots. It is a crime to point them at any vehicle in Australia and the United States.

Both the US and China are signatories to an international treaty which bans the use of blinding lasers as a weapon of war.