A J-15 fighter jet prepares to take off from a Chinese aircraft carrier in this undated photo posted June 12, 2025, by China's defense ministry. (China Military Online)
Tokyo and Beijing continued to trade barbs Monday over a claim that China locked military radar on Japanese fighter jets over the weekend, an incident two defense experts say is unlikely to spur serious consequences.
Japan on Sunday alleged that a Chinese J-15 launched from the aircraft carrier Liaoning “intermittently illuminated” two Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-15s, which scrambled in response to potential airspace violations near Okinawa.
A radar lock on a potential target can be the precursor to a missile attack.
“This radar illumination is a dangerous act that goes beyond the range of necessity for safe aircraft flight,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said at a news conference Monday in Tokyo.
The incident was “extremely regrettable,” and Japan has lodged a protest urging China not to repeat it, Kihara said, according to video posted on the Prime Minister’s Office website.
Beijing, however, faulted the Japanese fighters for frequent, close-range reconnaissance of China’s “normal military activities,” according to a statement Sunday from China’s Foreign Ministry.
“China does not accept the so-called protest from the Japanese side and has rejected it on the spot and lodged counter-protests in Beijing and in Tokyo,” the statement said.
The incident follows friction between the two countries after comments last month by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi that Chinese aggression against Taiwan could prompt a Japanese military response.
While the radar incident heightened tensions between the two, it isn’t as dramatic as either side makes it out to be, according to Paul Midford, a professor of international studies at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo.
“I do not anticipate significant consequences from this incident,” he said by email Monday. “This radar lock might have been intentional political signaling, it might have been accidental, or the result of an inflexible application of the Chinese carrier’s standard operating procedures.”
He referenced a similar incident in 2013, when Japan said a Chinese navy ship locked its fire-control radar onto a Japanese destroyer in the East China Sea — an incident that Beijing also disputed at the time.
“That was also a period of heightened tension soon after the hawkish Abe Shinzo had become prime minister,” he wrote. “A war of words erupted as a result, but little else came of it.”
Benjamin Blandin, a research fellow at the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies, cited multiple examples of aggressive air maneuvers by China and concluded that this most recent incident was nothing new.
“China has made a specialty of displaying such reckless behaviors with little to mostly no consequences,” he said. China is showing a “great degree of strategic anxiety and fragility in its responses.”
Neither Blandin nor Midford anticipated a significant response from the United States.
Spokespeople from Japan’s Ministry of Defense, U.S. Forces Japan and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Trump is hoping to improve relations with China ahead of a planned summit in April, according to Midford.
“Trump reportedly told Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae to avoid further statements that could further increase Sino-Japanese tensions following her statement last month on possible Japanese involvement in a Taiwan conflict, so I expect the administration is keen to downplay this incident,” he said.
