Japan said its fighter jets used flares for the first time to warn a Russian reconnaissance aircraft to leave its airspace, the defence ministry in Tokyo said, as tensions rise over increasing Russian and Chinese military cooperation in the region.An undisclosed number of F-15 and F-35 warplanes were scrambled and fired flares on Monday after the Russian II-38 maritime patrol aircraft apparently ignored their radio warnings, Japan’s defence minister, Minoru Kihara said.Kihara said it was also the first publicly announced airspace incursion by a Russian aircraft since June 2019, when a Tu-95 bomber entered Japanese airspace in southern Okinawa and around the Izu Islands south of Tokyo.He said the Russian plane had breached Japan’s airspace above Rebun Island, just off the coast of the country’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido, three times during its five-hour flight in the area.
Read More: Japan’s F-15 & F-35 Jets Fire Flares As Russian Spy Plane “Violates” Airspace In First Such
