Australian navy pilots struck by lasers in South China Sea
BEIJING — A witness says Australian navy helicopter pilots were hit by lasers while exercising in the South China Sea, forcing them to land as a precaution.
Scholar Euan Graham, who was onboard the Royal Australian Navy flagship HMAS Canberra on a voyage from Vietnam to Singapore, said in an account of the incident that the lasers had been pointed from passing fishing vessels while the Canberra was being trailed by a Chinese warship.
China maintains a robust maritime militia in the South China Sea composed of fishing vessels equipped to carry out missions just short of combat. China claims the strategic waterway virtually in its entirety and is sensitive to all foreign naval action in the area, especially by the U.S. and allies such as Australia.
"Was this startled fishermen reacting to the unexpected? Or was it the sort of coordinated harassment more suggestive of China's maritime militia? It's hard to say for sure, but similar incidents have occurred in the western Pacific," Euan Graham wrote on the website The Strategist run by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, an independent, non-partisan think tank based in Canberra. The account of the incident appeared Tuesday.
Similar incidents involving lasers and the Chinese military have also been reported as far away as Djibouti (jih-BOO'-tee), where the U.S. and China have bases. Last year, the U.S. complained to China after lasers were directed at aircraft in the Horn of Africa nation that resulted in minor injuries to two American pilots.
China denied that its forces targeted the U.S. military aircraft.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/australian-navy-pilots-struck-by-lasers-in-south-china-sea/ar-AAC1WbQ?li=BBnb7Kz
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