On February 17, an American P8-A Poseidon flew out of Okinawa on a routine mission to patrol international waters roughly 380 miles west of Guam.
On that patrol, the aircraft encountered a Chinese destroyer, the Hohhot. And as it did, it was struck by a military-grade laser that temporarily blinded the pilot.
It was an aggressive, reckless, and dangerous assault...
But hardly the first of its kind.
The fact is, China has been attacking U.S. forces with laser beams for years now.
They literally number in the thousands at this point.
Prior to the Feb. 17 incident, similar attacks had occurred in Djibouti, which is home to both U.S. and Chinese military bases.
You might not have realized we had a military base there, but Camp Lemonnier on the east coast of Africa is a key staging point for operations in terrorist hotbeds like Somalia and Yemen. Or at least it was until the Djiboutian government requested that the U.S. military halt its air operations there after a series of crashes.That was in 2018 after a U.S. Marine Corps Harrier jet crashed at the country's international airport, and a CH-53 helicopter sustained "minor damage" while landing in Arta Beach.
At the time no one was sure what had caused the crashes. The Pentagon was predictably tight-lipped about them.
But when Chinese lasers injured the eyes of two pilots flying a C-130, the Department of Defense finally broke its silence and issued a formal complaint. It was then that the cause of the accidents became clear.
The Pentagon issued a notice to its airmen telling them to "exercise caution" when flying in certain areas in Djibouti, due to lasers being directed at U.S. aircraft over a period of weeks. "During one incident, there were two minor eye injuries of aircrew flying in a C-130 that resulted from exposure to military-grade laser beams, which were reported to have originated from the nearby Chinese base," the notice said. One month later, U.S. officials acknowledged that military aircraft operating over the East China Sea had been targeted by lasers more than 20 times, and lodged a formal diplomatic protest with Beijing called a demarche.That's a serious step because laser weapons are a sensitive subject internationally.
The Geneva Conventions prohibit them from being used to target eyes because it can cause permanent damage. And both China and the U.S. are signatories to the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, which prohibits the use of blinding laser weapons as a means or method of warfare.
China, however, isn't known for its strict adherence to international law.
So the attacks persist, with Beijing denying culpability even as new attacks occur - such as a May 2019 attack on Australian Navy helicopter pilots in the South China Sea.