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US-China relations
ChinaMilitary

US warplanes on Beijing’s radar in South China Sea, American air force chiefs say

  • US Navy missions in disputed waters may get more public attention but flyovers have important role to play, senior military officials say

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General David Goldfein, chief of staff of the US Air Force, says that the job of the US military is to facilitate negotiators. Photo: Bloomberg
Liu Zhen
The US Air Force’s frequent activities over the South China Sea might not attract the same attention as the US Navy’s, but they still played an important role in negotiations with China, according to American air force officers.
General Charles Brown, commander of US Pacific Air Forces, said US warplanes – including bombers, U-2 reconnaissance aircraft and RQ-4 Global Hawk drones – regularly conducted “freedom of navigation” operations over the disputed waters despite China’s deployment of air defence facilities on artificial islands and reefs in the area.

“We’ve been flying in and around the South China Sea for really about the past 15 years, and I would probably tell you we’ve done some as recently as this week,” Brown said in Hawaii on Friday after the 2019 Pacific Air Chiefs Symposium.

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Brown said the aircraft were deployed alongside the US Navy’s P-3/P-8 anti-submarine planes, and while the flyovers did not get as much media coverage as naval operations, the response from China was just as strong.

“We do hear about it because we do get calls from the PRC,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

The South China Sea is home to some of the world’s busiest trade routes and is claimed by a number of countries in the region, including China, which has built military outposts with airfields, naval harbours on its artificial islands, and deployed air defence radars and missiles there.

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