The ruckus after South Korea fired warning shots at a nosy Russian spy plane marks a significant rise in tensions.
Last Tuesday (23 July) was a bad day in Northeast Asia, not just for what happened but what it foreshadows. Tensions are rising. After all, it’s not every day that a South Korean jet fighter fires across the bow of a Russian spy plane.
Tuesday’s first big event was the inaugural China-Russia joint air patrol between large, long-range, nuclear cruise missile capable bombers. The People’s Liberation Army Air Force sent two H-6Ks from the Nanjing Military Region. The Russian Aerospace Space Force sent two Tu-95MS from the Ukrainka airbase in Russia’s east, the same base’s aircraft deployed to Indonesia in 2017.
The bombers rendezvoused north of the disputed Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo in Korea, Takeshima in Japan) in the Sea of Japan and formed a box formation, flying some 3–4 kilometres apart. The formation then flew southwest at an altitude of about 26,000ft (8000 metres), passing between Japan and South Korea. The Chinese aircraft departed for home when west of Okinawa; the Russian aircraft then flew east until southeast of Okinawa before returning to Ukrainka.
Please click here to read the full “The trouble in the air on a tense Tuesday in Northeast Asia” article published at The Interpreter, written by Griffith Asia Institute Visiting Fellow, Dr Peter Layton.
