China Says US Spy Planes Posed As Airliners "Over 100 Times" & Put Civilians At Risk Tyler Durden Tue, 09/22/2020 - 21:45 Earlier this month Chinese and Russian media began highlighting what was reported as a significant uptick in US spy planes changing their transponder codes in order to disguise themselves during operations near China. One known recent instance involved a US Air Force RC-135S Cobra Ball out of Okinawa attempting to observe Chinese PLA missile tests being conducted in the Yellow Sea by presenting itself on radar as a Malaysian plane. And Beijing has blasted the alleged US practice, now saying it's caught the United States military doing this at least 100 times this year alone, and says it has radar evidence of spy planes attempting to conceal their identity in the region's skies. Airliner file image China says the radar evasion practice is incredibly dangerous given the ability of missile defense tracking on the ground to "confuse" threats, such as happened with the Ukrainian airline 'accidental shootdown' tragedy over Iran last January. China's foreign ministry has called the concealment of American aircraft in the region a "serious security threat," with Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin issuing the following statement: "It's a common trick for the US Air Force to impersonate the transponder code of civilian aircraft from other countries … It is of a vile nature," the FM spokesman said earlier this week. "We urge the US to immediately stop such dangerous provocations, to avoid accidents from happening in the sea and air." Wang described Chinese records of American spy plane activity in the area as "incomplete." It was a Chinese think tank called the South China Sea Probing Initiative (SCSPI), based at China’s Peking University, that first observed the strange behavior of a plane which appeared on tracking radar on Sept.9 as a "mysterious Malaysian plane" soon after an Air Force jet "went dark" by allegedly switching off its transponder. This open source discovery drove headlines around the world at the time, and apparently Beijing is now confirming it has data showing this actually happens frequently. Regional media has warned about an untick in incidents this past summer, with SCMP saying: "Cases of mistaken identity have led to passenger planes being shot down in the past, observers warn." US spy planes in South China Sea ‘creating risk’ for civilian aircraft https://t.co/m6sZWMw18a — SCMP News (@SCMPNews) https://twitter.com/SCMPNews/status/1293361618387075074?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); “This undoubtedly added up to great risk and uncertainty to international flight safety, which could lead to misjudgment (by ground air defence systems) and probably bring danger to civilian aircraft especially those being impersonated,” SCSPI stated previously in a public report based on open source radar. Earlier this month the communist-run country's senior diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, said charged the United States with "directly intervening in territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea due to its own political needs," according to Reuters.