Seoul scrambles jets as warplanes enter zone

Seoul: South Korea said Friday it scrambled fighter jets to respond to a group of Russian and Chinese warplanes that entered its air buffer zone unannounced.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected seven Russian and two Chinese military aircraft in the country’s air defense identification zone off its eastern coast.

Anticipating the moves, South Korea had already sent fighter jets and other aircraft to the area to prevent accidental clashes, but the Russian and Chinese planes left without breaching South Korea’s territorial airspace, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

China later told South Korea through a military communication channel that the flights were part of its routine military exercises with Russia.

(We) assess the current situation as a joint exercise between China and Russia and additional analysis is needed, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

Air defense identification zones usually expand beyond the country’s territory to allow more time to respond to potentially hostile aircraft. Military planes entering another country’s air defense identification zone are required to notify it in advance.

Chinese and Russian warplanes have often entered South Korea’s air defense identification zones in recent years as they increasingly flex their muscle amid an intensifying competition with the United States.

In 2019, South Korea said its fighter jets fired hundreds of warning shots toward a Russian military plane that it said twice violated its national airspace off its eastern coast. Russia then denied that its aircraft entered South Korea’s territory. -(AP)

Beijing hypersonic missile ‘went around the world’ in July

Washington/Beijing: China might one day be able to launch a surprise nuclear attack on the United States, the second highestranking American military officer has warned as he shed new details of Beijing’s hypersonic weapons test in July, which sent a missile around the world at more than five times the speed of sound. “They launched a long-range missile,” General John Hyten, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told CBS News while commenting on China’s hypersonic weapons test on July 27. “It went around the world, dropped off a hypersonic glide vehicle that glided all the way back to China, that impacted a target in China,” he said on Tuesday. When asked if the missile hit the target, Hyten said, “Close enough.” China has denied that it carried out a hypersonic missile test, saying it was testing a reusable spacecraft. Though the Chinese weapon missed its target by several kilometers, according to the Financial Times, the test marked the first time any country had sent a hypersonic weapon fully around the Earth. Hypersonic weapons travel at more than five times the speed of sound, making it difficult for radars to detect. Combined with hundreds of new missile silos China is building, Hyten believes China could one day have the capability to launch a surprise nuclear attack on the US. “They look like a first-use weapon,” Hyten told CBS News. “That’s what those weapons look like to me.” Hyten said that in the last five years, China has carried out hundreds of hypersonic tests, while the US has conducted just nine. China has already deployed one medium-range hypersonic weapon, while the US is still a few years from fielding its first one, according to Hyten.