TOKYO (AP) — Japan and Australia urged calm Sunday after Chinese military planes jammed radar on Japanese fighter jets, a month after the Japanese leader’s recent remarks about Taiwan raised tensions between Tokyo and Beijing.
Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said Japan formally protested the incident, calling it a “very regrettable” and “dangerous” act that “exceeded the scope necessary for safe aircraft operations.”
“We lodged a strong protest with the Chinese side and demanded strict preventive measures,” Koizumi said.
Japan’s Defense Ministry said China’s J-15 military aircraft took off from the Chinese carrier Liaoning near the southern island of Okinawa on Saturday and “intermittently” picked up its radar on Japanese F-15 fighter jets on two occasions Saturday, for about three minutes in the late afternoon and for about 30 minutes in the evening. It was not clear if the radar lock incident involved the same Chinese J-15 both times.
Japanese fighter jets that had been scrambled to follow Chinese jets that were conducting takeoff and landing exercises in the Pacific. They were following the Chinese plane at a safe distance and did not take actions that could be interpreted as provocation, Kyodo News agency said, citing defense officials, when the radar lock occurred. There was no violation of Japanese airspace, and no injuries or damage were reported from the incident.
Senior Colonel Wang Xuemeng, a spokesman for the Chinese navy, defended China’s flight training near Miyako island on Saturday, saying Beijing announced the drills in advance and accused the Japanese planes of “harassment.”
“We solemnly requested the Japanese side to immediately stop slander and slander, and strictly suppress its forward actions. The Chinese Navy will take the necessary measures according to the law to resolutely safeguard its own security and legitimate rights and interests,” Wang said in a statement posted Sunday on the website of the Chinese Ministry of Defense.
Relations between Japan and China worsened after Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in early November that his military could get involved if China were to take action against Taiwan, the autonomous island that Beijing claims as its own.
Japan and Australia, whose defense ministers held their scheduled talks in Tokyo on Sunday, expressed concern about the development.
“We are very concerned about China’s actions in the last 24 hours,” Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles told a joint news conference Sunday after holding talks with Koizumi. “We expect those interactions to be safe and professional.”
Australia “does not want to see any change in the status quo around the Taiwan Strait,” Marles said, adding that China is his country’s biggest trading partner and wants to have productive relations with Beijing.
“We will continue to support China on these issues once again, in a very calm, sensible and moderate way,” he said.
Japan and Australia, during Sunday’s talks, agreed to strengthen military ties to drive multilateral defense cooperation in the region. The two ministers agreed to form a comprehensive “framework for strategic defense coordination” and discuss further details.
Tokyo has been accelerating its military buildup while expanding its defense ties beyond its only treaty ally, the United States. It now considers Australia a semi-ally.
Marles also visited a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard in Nagasaki on Saturday to observe the production of the upgraded Mogami-class frigate that his country selected in September as a replacement for its aging fleet.
Saturday’s radar lock is believed to be the first involving Japanese and Chinese military aircraft. In 2013, a Chinese warship targeted a radar on a Japanese destroyer, Kyodo said.
Fighter jets use radars for search or fire control operations before launching missiles.
Elsewhere in the Pacific, the Philippine coast guard said China fired three flares at a fisheries bureau aircraft on patrol in the South China Sea on Saturday. Chinese forces fire flares to warn the planes to move away from what they consider their airspace over the disputed waters.
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Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.