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this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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Shouldn't all bombers be flying with fighter escorts? How did a Chinese fighter plane manage to get so close to it?
What difference would that make? They're not going to shoot it down.
Ah yes, let’s potentially start WW3 with a nuclear power because a Chinese pilot got too close, and an American pilot got an itchy trigger finger.
I’d love for that to be the reason I get flash boiled in a nuclear strike.
Wow, you get so angry when learning something new. It's worth reporting about because it's one small twitch of the finger from an international incident.
That's not how that works in international airspace, you can't shoot down any plane that gets to close or looks at you funny.
This kind of engagement is a delicate dance with serious consequences attached to aggressive actions.
Because that is an act of war. They are in international waters/air space. They are both allowed to be there. It is dangerous and unprofessional to get that close. The presence being known is all that matters. That jet can engage from 10 miles away or more, depending on the missiles it carries. Shooting it down just for getting close would start a war. And we do the same thing to their planes. We just maintain a safe distance. The US and Russia have done this since the 1940's to each other.
If nothing else, the fighter could lock their weapons at the Chinese fighter jet and make them sweat a bit.
Act of war. They don't do that. That doesn't happen in real life, that scene from Top Gun was for dramatic effect. They never do that unless they are actively engaged to kill.
I think the US government considers active radar jamming to be an act of war but I'm not aware of any statements or treaties that would make targeting itself an act of war. As I understand it the US and China do it to each other fairly regularly.
As I understand it, a "weapons lock" is mostly about deliberately pointing your detectors at a target. The target may notice a spike in radar sweeps but they don't actually know what the other vessel is doing with that radar information.
It's kind of like when someone starts staring at you really hard. You get a feeling that they're probably up to something but you don't actually know if they're coming to take a swing at you or if it's just RBF.
From what I've read it's something that happens fairly regularly. If you want to warn an other military vehicle without escalating to warning shots you flash some targeting sensors at them.
My guess is that the fighter and bomber were targeting each other and that a bunch of land based radars on the Chinese coast joined the party too.
edit: looks like I was wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_lock-on It seems that "lock on" as we know it from movies and video games isn't a thing with modern military equipment. I suspect the signal intelligence folks still have some thing that tells a pilot, "data suggests that someone may be planning to shoot you".
There are only fighter escorts if there is a specific threat with hostile intent that requires them. Most non-fighter Air Force aircraft don’t fly with escorts routinely.
There were fighter pilots from 3 nations escorting a B52 on Sunday. The articles I can find for the Tuesday flight do not mention any fighter escorts.
https://www.flyingmag.com/us-japan-south-korea-conduct-trilateral-b-52-escort-exercise/
Most likely the bomber was flying there to establish our right to do. By not being a fighter it helps avoid an engagement. I have no specific knowledge of this incident, but in general we don't want an engagement as that can escalate quicky. We just want to say that we don't recognize the borders they claim.
No, we don't really do that any more. It's not really necessary.
We put the fighters where they need to be when they need to be there. This bomber is just flying its patrol route, they don't need to be protected along their path to the target, they don't need to be anywhere near their targets, they're loaded with cruise missiles and they strike from dozens or hundreds of miles away.