A Chinese fighter pilot flew "within 10 feet” of a nuclear-capable U.S. B-52 bomber flying over the South China Sea, where a territorial dispute between China and a key U.S. ally threatens to flare into a crisis.

“During the night time intercept, the [People's Republic of China] pilot flew in an unsafe and unprofessional manner, demonstrated poor airmanship by closing with uncontrolled excessive speed, flying below, in front of, and within 10 feet of the B-52, putting both aircraft in danger of collision,” the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command announced Thursday. “We are concerned this pilot was unaware of how close he came to causing a collision.”

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That incident occurred on Tuesday after a weekend that saw a pair of collisions between Chinese vessels and Philippine boats attempting to deliver supplies to a Philippine military outpost in the Second Thomas Shoal. The United States has a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines, which won a case against China in an international court that rejected Beijing’s territorial claims, but Chinese officials refuse to honor that ruling and maintain President Joe Biden’s affirmation of the alliance will not sway them.

“The U.S. is not a party to the South China Sea issue and has no right to interfere in the issue between China and the Philippines,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Thursday. “The U.S. defense commitment to the Philippines should not undermine China’s sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in South China Sea, nor should it support the illegal claims of the Philippines.”

Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping’s regime has asserted sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, the maritime corridor between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Philippine officials regard that as a “ridiculous assertion to suit its expansionist ends,” as Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro put it this week.

“It is clear that we are not at war with China,” Teodoro said, per the South China Morning Post. “We are just protecting what is ours under international law.”

The Chinese fighter pilot’s intercept adds to the tally of "more than 280 coercive and risky intercepts in the air domain against the U.S. and its allies and partners over the past roughly two years” that Pentagon officials described on Monday.

“Although we do maintain working level communications on a pretty routine basis, we've seen, unfortunately, the PRC largely denying, canceling, or ignoring most of our requests for everything from routine annual dialogues to senior leader engagements,” the Pentagon’s Michael Chase, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, said Monday.

The collisions and the harassment of the U.S. bomber occurred as China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, made his final preparations for a visit to Washington that began on Thursday. Yet American analysts surmised that the timing of the confrontation around the Second Thomas Shoal could have more to do with the Philippine need to deliver supplies to the outpost, which is an intentionally grounded ship in major need of maintenance and fortification, which China is keen to prevent.

“Some of the Chinese efforts are to prevent Philippine resupplying, right, so some of the timing is also determined by what the Philippines are doing there,” Center for Strategic and International Studies senior fellow Bonnie Lin, the defense secretary’s senior adviser for China from 2015 to 2018, told the Washington Examiner. “But preventing the resupply and reinforcement doesn't mean that China has to engage in such aggressive tactics. That's where it's unclear why China is using these tactics, such as, for example, directly, directly running into or colliding with Philippine vessels to prevent the resupply.”

The near collision between the B-52 and the Chinese warplane occurred as the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Group sailed through the region in a show of solidarity with the Philippines.

“Visits by aircraft carrier are not very common but this is already the second visit by the Ronald Reagan in the year that I have been here in the Philippines,” U.S. Embassy Manila spokesman Kanishka Gangopadhyay told local reporters on Wednesday, per the Manila Bulletin. “We are here to support your exercise of your sovereign rights in your [exclusive economic zone], and we are very happy to reiterate our ironclad alliance with the Philippines.”

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An analyst quoted by Chinese state media insisted those pledges are all for show. “The US is unlikely to stand up for the Philippines,” China’s Institute of Maritime Law and Policy deputy director Ding Duo told Global Times. “It will certainly emphasize its 'security commitments' to its allies, otherwise that would directly affect the US' reputation in the eyes of its allies. But the question is, do others believe what the US says? China has never felt threatened and will not fall for this trick.”

Chinese forces are trying to spook the U.S. military into withdrawing from areas that Beijing has claimed as its own, according to defense officials. “We understand that they have ambitions to drive the United States out of the region,” Dr. Ely Ratner, who leads the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Security Affairs bureau, said Monday. "[They are] trying to interfere with lawful behavior. And I think it's part and parcel of a broader effort by the PRC to refashion the Indo-Pacific Region away from the kind of free and open Indo-Pacific that we're trying to build.“