When the USS Decatur was sailing in the South China Sea, they saw a Chinese vessel 135 feet, or 45 yards, away from their bow, a distance incredibly close for ships. The commander had to make last-second maneuvers to avoid colliding with the Chinese ship.  The U.S. Navy described the Chinese ship’s actions as unsafe and unprofessional due to the risky close-call situation with naval vehicles and aircraft. Because the U.S. military’s ships and aircraft do operations all around the world, it isn’t very surprising that they experience close calls with other nations.

However, these type of interactions are extremely rare. If a call like this is highly dangerous, they will file a complaint to the nation and say they have the right to sail or fly in international seas and airspace. The encounters with Russia and China have been becoming more frequent as the years go by, but the reasons are different. Russia is believed to be putting in greater resources into military buildup on its borders. U.S. officials believe China’s motives for these interactions are to show aggression of their territorial claims of the South China Sea and to let the U.S. military know of this so they will leave them be.

Similar interactions that have occurred include the Russian SU-27 flying five feet off a Navy EP-3 Aries surveillance plane above the Black Sea. The distance is close, but that isn’t the real danger of this act – the SU-27 flew right in the path of the EP-3’s flight path which made it fly through its jet wash. Perhaps the most dangerous encounter with Russia was when a pair of SU-27’s flew 30 feet from the USS Donald Cook. The Pentagon released a statement on how dangerous and risk the plane’s maneuvers were. These type of interactions can lead to serious damage to naval vehicles and aircraft and are extremely dangerous and risky for the military.