New Delhi: Australian pilots and aircrew are counselled routinely after tense encounters with Chinese military jets over the South China Sea like the episode that happened in May last year during a routine patrol in international airspace, senior officials in Australia’s air force revealed to the state-run radio broadcaster on Monday
“The mental health of our aviators and people…coming in contact with things like intercepts or challenges on the radio…it’s important that when we bring them back, we talk to them about the experience. And (it’s important) we talk to them about what services are available, should they be troubled by the experiences they saw,” Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Air Commander, Air Vice Marshal Darren Goldie, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
Ties between the two countries had nosedived after Australia banned Chinese telecom giant Huawei from its 5G network in 2018. Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and its growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region has stoked tensions with Canberra.
On 26 May last year, a Chinese J-16 fighter jet released flares in the direction of an RAAF P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft, Australia’s Department of Defence had stated at the time.
“Defence says the Chinese plane released flares while flying closely alongside the Australian plane, before cutting in front of the P-8 and releasing a bag of ‘chaff’ into its flight path, which included aluminium fragments that were sucked into the engine of the Australian plane,” an ABC report from June 2022 added.
Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles had reacted to the incident, saying that his country will continue to exercise its rights to free movement and navigation in the South China Sea.
“This incident will not deter Australia from continuing to engage in these activities which are within our rights at international law, to ensure that there is freedom of navigation in the South China Sea because that is fundamentally in our nation’s interests,” Breaking Defense quoted Marles as saying last June.
A few months prior to the J-16 flares incident, then prime Minister Scott Morrison alleged in February that a Chinese-PLA Navy vessel in the Arafura Sea had directed a laser at an RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft in an “act of intimidation”.
“Morrison said Australia would be ‘making our views very clear’ to the Chinese government through defence and diplomatic channels. Morrison said China needed to provide an explanation ‘as to why a military vessel in Australia’s exclusive economic zone would undertake such an act — such a dangerous act’,” The Guardian had reported.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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