American military spy planes conducted some 1,000 sorties over the South China Sea last year, a Chinese think tank said in a report, amid mounting tensions over Beijing’s claims in the region.
Many of the U.S. aircraft “intruded” into Chinese waters and airspace and interfered with People’s Liberation Army drills, Peking University’s South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI) wrote in the March 21 article. However, most of the approximately 100 U.S. surveillance planes said to have approached China flew no closer than 30 nautical miles (35 miles) from the country’s territorial baselines, it said, which would put them in international airspace.
China claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, citing unspecified historical rights, putting it at odds with several neighbors. Beijing routinely accuses the U.S. and its allies of trespassing, even in areas lying squarely within the internationally recognized exclusive economic zones of other nations, such as the Philippines.
Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Josiah Kunkle/U.S. Navy
The strategically important sea is rich in oil and natural gas reserves. It’s also crucial for the business world, with an estimated one-fifth of global trade passing through there each year.
The SCSPI said that throughout 2023, the U.S. flew about 1,000 sorties “in various types of large reconnaissance aircraft” out of its airbases in Japan, South Korea, Guam, and the Philippines.
The estimate matches that of its 2022 and 2020 figures, but falls short of the 1,200 American military sorties the think tank counted in 2021.
The U.S. reconnaissance planes “frequently disrupted the normal exercises and drills of the PLA by intruding into relevant maritime and airspace, leading to close encounters with Chinese alert forces,” according to the think tank.
Washington and its allies have in the past complained of aggressive and unsafe interceptions by People’s Liberation Army pilots in international airspace.
In its latest China Military Power Report, the Pentagon tallied over 180 instances of “coercive and risky air intercepts against U.S. aircraft in the region—more in the past two years than in the previous decade,” as well as 100 such incidents involving aircraft operated by American partners and allies over the same period.
Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said the pattern represented a “centralized campaign” to pressure the U.S. to alter its operations in the region.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and Chinese foreign ministry didn’t immediately respond to written requests for comment.
In a separate report published earlier this month, the SCSPI said the U.S. military had flown 60 crewed and uncrewed reconnaissance missions in the South China Sea, two-thirds of which were conducted by Navy P-8A Poseidons.
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