The US on Tuesday accused China of orchestrating a “concerted” campaign of dangerous and provocative air force maneuvers against US military planes in international airspace, saying that such moves could spark inadvertent conflict between the two powers.
The Pentagon said aggressive tactics by Chinese aircraft threatened US planes flying over the East and South China seas, tallying more than 180 such incidents since the fall of 2021 — “more in the past two years than in the decade before that,” US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner said.
“That’s nearly 200 cases where [Chinese] operators have ... discharged chaff or shot off flares or approached too rapidly or close to US aircraft,” Ratner told a news conference.
Photo: Reuters
“This type of operational behavior can cause accidents, and dangerous accidents can lead to inadvertent conflict,” Ratner said, adding that the incident count, tallied since the fall of 2021, increases to nearly 300 when US allies are included.
Ratner said there was an intentional campaign by Beijing “to perform these risky behaviors in order to coerce a change in lawful US operational activity.”
“The United States will not be deterred, or coerced. We will continue to fly, sail and operate safely and responsibly, wherever international law allows,” he said.
In one instance, a Chinese fighter plane “approached our asset at a speed of hundreds of miles per hour, clearly armed and closing to just 30 feet [9m] away,” and stayed there for more than 15 minutes, Ratner said.
Meanwhile, Japan, South Korea and the US are to conduct a joint aerial drill this weekend involving a US nuclear-weapons-capable B-52 bomber, media reports said.
The trilateral exercise on Sunday would be the first of its kind conducted near the Korean Peninsula, an unnamed military source told Yonhap news agency.
A South Korean Ministry of Defense official declined to confirm the reports, but said that the three countries were expanding joint exercises “to counter missile and nuclear threats from North Korea.”
“The South Korea-US-Japan joint aerial exercise will consist of a formation flight with the US strategic bomber B-52 escorted by fighter jets of the three countries,” a source told Yonhap.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS