Chinese jets locked radar on Japanese fighters

A Chinese J-15 jet fighter that took off from the Chinese navy’s Liaoning aircraft carrier locked its radar on a Japanese F-15 that was investigating its presence in the seas off Okinawa.

Chinese warplanes locked radar on Japanese military aircraft in the seas near the Japanese island of Okinawa on Saturday, in two separate incidents that Tokyo said were dangerous acts.

The incidents add to tensions between the two countries as China continues its diplomatic pressure campaign against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. She angered China’s ruling Communist Party when she said early in November that an attack on Taiwan could drag Japan into conflict in defence of itself and its allies, which include the US.

A Chinese J-15 jet fighter that took off from the Chinese navy’s Liaoning aircraft carrier on Saturday locked its radar on a Japanese F-15 that was investigating its presence in the airspace over international waters near Okinawa, Japan’s defence minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, said on his official X account. The incident occurred around 4.30pm local time.

A second, similar incident occurred two hours later, Mr Koizumi said, involving a different Japanese plane. Like many countries, Japan conducts air defence identification zone, or ADIZ, operations to identify aircraft coming close to its airspace.

No one was hurt, but Mr Koizumi said Tokyo had lodged a protest with Beijing over the Chinese aircraft’s behaviour. “This radar lock-on incident constitutes a dangerous act that exceeds the scope necessary for the safe flight of aircraft,” he said on X.

In a message posted Sunday on a People’s Liberation Army Navy social-media account and attributed to Senior Capt. Wang Xuemeng, the Chinese military said that in recent days Chinese aircraft were conducting routine flight training and that they were repeatedly approached by Japanese aircraft. Mr Wang accused the Japanese pilots of acting unsafely.

China has the world’s largest navy and has been steadily broadening its maritime reach with large-scale drills far from Chinese shores. In June, both of Beijing’s in-service aircraft carriers were spotted operating in the Western Pacific close to Japan. During that deployment, a Japanese patrol was tailed by Chinese aircraft.

In late February and early March, three Chinese navy ships travelled through the Tasman Sea and around Australia.

The waters south of Japan would be an important theatre in a Chinese military effort to take over Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy that Beijing considers its own territory, to be seized by force if necessary. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has set military modernisation goals including fielding a force that could seize Taiwan by 2027, U.S. officials have said.

Responding to questions in the Japanese Parliament on Nov 7, Ms Takaichi said that in the hypothetical scenario of an attempt to seize Taiwan, Japan could be forced to deploy its military under the self-defence clauses of its largely pacifist constitution. She added that Japan’s longstanding position is that issues surrounding Taiwan should be resolved peacefully.

Beijing says Taiwan is a purely domestic affair and reacted with fury. It urged Chinese travellers to stay away from Japan, threatened to stop imports of Japanese seafood, and continues to wage a campaign against Ms Takaichi herself in diplomatic circles and state and social media, where it accuses her of seeking to revive Japan’s wartime militarism.

Dow Jones