China’s flyers flout aviation rules with flares and flybys

It happened again. A Chinese pilot flew his aircraft dangerously close to a foreign aircraft, something that is happening with increased frequency.

In the latest incident, on Feb. 19, a Chinese naval helicopter flew within 9 meters (yards) of a small low-flying Philippine plane above the Scarborough Shoal.

The Cessna Caravan turboprop plane belongs to the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources. Scarborough Shoal, situated 120 miles from Luzon, is well within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone.

The previous week, a Chinese J-16 jet fighter made an “unsafe and unprofessional interaction,” releasing at least four flares, 30 meters in front of a Royal Australian Air Force P–8A Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft that was flying near the Paracel Islands.

China claims the Australian aircraft “intentionally intruded” into Chinese airspace.

A Chinese official described the response as “completely reasonable, legal and beyond reproach,” and “a legitimate defense of national sovereignty and security.”

In violation of international law, China has drawn straight baselines around the Paracel and Spratly Islands; something that only archipelagic states are allowed to do under the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea.

Countries routinely challenge these excessive maritime claims through naval and aerial freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs).

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We have seen a pattern of aggressive behavior from Chinese pilots.

An October 2023 report by the U.S. Department of Defense documented some 180 unsafe aerial encounters by Chinese pilots in the previous two years, and over 100 additional encounters with the aircraft of U.S. allies and partners.

That tally was more than all such incidents in the previous decade combined.

Creating unsafe situations

Most U.S. Navy aircraft are now equipped with external cameras to document dangerous Chinese encounters.

One should recount that the April 2001 EP3 incident that caused the emergency landing and a hostage-like situation for the 24 member U.S. Navy crew, was caused by a Chinese pilot who was unaware of the concept of propellers. The J-8II pilot was killed in the crash.

While Chinese pilots are famously aggressive and routinely fly at unsafe and unprofessional close quarters over the South China Sea, the dropping of flares was unseen until around 2022.

While using flares to signal an unresponsive airplane at a safe distance is lawful and a signal of escalatory actions, how the Chinese pilots are employing them now is dangerous, unprofessional, and dramatically escalates the potential for the loss of life.

On Oct. 5, 2023, a Canadian CP-140 reconnaissance helicopter conducting patrols in support of a UN Security Council-authorized sanctions monitoring against North Korea in the Yellow Sea experienced “multiple passes” at five meters (yards).

Three weeks later, a pair of PLA-Navy J-11 fighters made multiple passes at a Canadian helicopter that was conducting routine patrols as the HMCS Ottawa was conducting a FONOP near the Paracel Islands.

The Chinese pilots ejected flares during the second flyby, forcing the Canadian pilot to take evasive action.

In May 2024, PLA-Air Force pilots deployed flares in front of an Australian MH-60-R helicopter that was flying in international waters in support of UNSC-authorized sanctions monitoring against North Korea. The helicopter had to take evasive actions to avoid the flares.

The following month, a Dutch helicopter flying above its destroyer, also in support of the U.N. sanctions monitoring in international waters in the Yellow Sea, was approached by two Chinese jets and a helicopter, which “created a potentially unsafe situation.”

Flares present risks

There are major risks from using flares. The first is proximity: If a Chinese pilot is close enough to deploy flares in a way that could cause damage, his plane is already flying at an unsafe distance.

Most of the flares used are pyrotechnic magnesium, i.e. a dense mass of inflamed metal that burns at very high temperatures – to perform as decoys for heat-seeking missiles.

These flares pose multiple risks to planes that could lead to the loss of human life.

For planes such as a P-8, they can be sucked into a jet engine intake. For propeller driven planes, such as a P-3 or smaller surveillance craft, a direct hit on the engine could irreparably damage the propeller.

Though the four-engine P-3s and P-8s are both able to fly on one engine, it’s still a risk.

There is a greater threat to the helicopter rotors. Though it is unlikely they could get through the rotor blades and into the filtered intake, it’s not impossible.

Moreover, the skin of many military helicopters is made of magnesium alloys and is itself highly flammable.

Many surveillance and anti-submarine helicopters fly with open doors, and the last thing the crew wants is a flare, ejected out of a plane at an angle, getting inside an aircraft.

Another concern is an escalatory threat. To some sensors on aircraft, the flares can appear as missiles. This is in an already tense operating environment, when an aircraft’s counter-measures are being controlled automatically in response to its sensors.

Pilots’ perverse incentive structure

There is no need to use flares in this way, but someone, somewhere, in the PLA decided that this is tactically a good idea – and a natural escalatory step from the “thumping” tactics that their pilots routinely conduct.

The use of flares is tied to the aggression that we have long seen from Chinese pilots. In their system, aggressive and unprofessional flying is not only not discouraged, but is actually encouraged.

While there’s no evidence that there’s a PLA-AF directive that requires pilots to make unsafe encounters, it is clearly what is considered “commanders intent” to defend China’s “historical waters and airspace.”

In Chinese military doctrine, this is referred to as “using the enemy to train the troops.”

According to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Center for the Study of the PLA-AF, there is not a single incident that they can point to where a Chinese pilot has faced disciplinary action for aggressive flying.

In short, behavior that would cost a U.S. pilot his or her wings is encouraged by the PLA leadership.

The Chinese Navy and Air Force will continue their coercive and risky operational behavior in the East and South China Seas as they seek to enforce Beijing’s excessive maritime claims, impinging on the sovereign rights of other states or making illegal assertions in international waters and airspace.

A flotilla of PLA-N ships has been sailing some 150 nautical miles east of Sydney, Australia. While such passages are lawful, China’s unprofessional and aggressive tactics are meant to raise the costs to deter other states from flying or sailing where international law permits.

The law for me, not for thee.

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or BenarNews.