The Australian Department of Defense has announced an incident between a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft patrolling over the South China Sea and a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) J-16 fighter aircraft. The J-16 deployed flares close to the P-8A that came within 30 meters (~100 feet) of the aircraft. The “unsafe and unprofessional” action of the Chinese aircraft mirrors those of Russian aircraft over the Black Sea in recent years and is not a new tactic employed by the Chinese. China claims the majority of the South China Sea inside its “nine-dash line, a series of unfounded territorial claims made by the Chinese that overlap the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of a number of nations in the Western Pacific.