American defense treaty allies South Korea and Japan scrambled fighter jets on Thursday in response to long-range air patrols by Chinese and Russian strategic bombers, their militaries said.
The warplane formations merged in the Sea of Japan, or what both Koreas call the East Sea, before carrying out the joint exercises in South Korea’s air defense identification zone within international airspace, according to Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Defense Ministry in Tokyo published a map of the flight paths through Northeast Asia, said the Japan Air Self-Defense Force launched fighter aircraft to monitor and photograph the movements.
The joint patrols featuring strategic assets from the Russian Air Force and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force were the seventh of their kind and the second such exercise this year following similar sorties in June.
It was a sign of growing security collaboration between Moscow and Beijing, two quasi-allies who have found themselves in direct strategic and ideological confrontations with the West in general and the United States in particular.
Images released by the Joint Staff of Japan’s Defense Ministry captured what Tokyo said were a pair of Russian Tu-95 and a pair of Chinese H-6 nuclear-capable bombers, which flew from the Sea of Japan into the East China Sea via the Tsushima Strait, or known as the Eastern Channel in Seoul.
The long-range missile platforms—Soviet-built or based on Soviet design—were accompanied by a maritime reconnaissance aircraft from each country, Russia’s Tu-142 and China’s Y-8, according to Tokyo. Additional images suggested the Russian and Chinese air forces sent Su-35 and J-16 fighter jets as escorts.
Seoul’s military said it lodged a protest with Beijing via direct military line over the “incursion” into its air defense zone. It had no means of doing the same with Moscow, said South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.
