Re: Japanese ships dusrupted chinese naval exercicies
Acording to china´s defence ministry, japanese ships disrupted chinese naval exercices
Is this something that frequently occurs, and if not, how serious is it?
Hard to say. We would need more details...which we are not likely to get.
If the Chinese announced the exercises, and if they were away from normal sea lanes and in international waters, most nations would try and respect the actual exercises, but could also very well send vessels to conduct surveillance and see what electronic communications and sensor data they could pick up. My guess is that the Japanese were there doing that type of thing.
If it involved ships actually hindering the safe and direct navigation of other ships...that would be a different thing and could lead to collissions and dangerous situations.
It just depends on the details.
Other nation's monitoring exerciese and basically being a thorn in the side of someone conducting their own exerciese is not uncommon. Physically hindering them or intruding right into the middle of the exercise and coming very close to the other ships, particularly on a course that might collide or bump each other would be a pretty significant escalation.