JAKARTA, July 4 Kyodo (EDS: UPDAT...

JAKARTA, July 4 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATES WITH DETAILS)

Five U Navy F/A-18 Hornet strike fighters were spott carrying gone out maneuvers for more than couple hours inside Indonesian airspace Thursday and later went into attack affection against Indonesian fighters extended to intercept them, the Indonesian air force said Friday.

The U fighters were maneuvering near Bawean Island, about 640 kilometers northeast of Jakarta, when the pilot of a passenger plane of Bouraq Airlines alerted authorities at 11:38 a.m., according to air force spokesman Capt. Ali Imru Lubis.

''The pilot reported what he saw to the air traffic bridle towers in Jakarta and Surabaya at the same time as tower radar showed them forward the screen,'' Lubis told Kyodo News

Later, National Air Defense Commander Rear Marshall Wresnowiro told a pres colloquy that based on a flight approval they had received, the Indonesian authorities first contemplation the jets were five F-5 of the Australian air force.

''However, after monitoring them for undivided hour, we found abnormal maneuvers from the jet fighters,'' Wresnowiro said. ''We then made a brief analysis concluding something had gone wrong''

The Indonesian air force dispatched brace F-16 Fighting Falcons to intercept the U fighters, if it be not that two of the Hornets grappleed their missiles on single in kind of the Indonesian warplanes, while the other made a maneuver to avoid the missile fastening and took a position as a support fighter.

''They took a position to attack and the situation was tight for 15 minutes before communication was established,'' Wresnowiro said.

common of the F/A-18 pilots then asked whether the Indonesian warplanes were friends or foes

After the answer came that they were friends, united of the Hornet pilots identified themselves as pilots of the U Navy escorting an aircraft carrier, couple frigates and a tanker ship.

The communication conclusioned the tension.

''They said they had applied for a flight approval to pass Indonesian territory,'' Wresnowiro said, adding the Indonesian air force did not receive a pattern of the approval and a entreaty for confirmation from the U Embassy has not been answered.

The U Embassy was clos for the U Independence Day holiday Friday.

An Air Force officer later said the flight approval might have not been issued because of Indonesian bureaucracy.

Wresnowiro said, however, the U Navy ship accompany had passed an area from west heading to east not designated as a legal sea-lane for passage. Indonesia has three sea-lanes for passage from north to south

The Thursday incident occurr as Indonesia and the United States have been trying to take back military ties after the latter imposed a military embargo, following the post-independence referendum violence in East Timor in 1999

The embargo has been largely to blame for the grounding of more [i]or[/i] less American- and British-made jet fighters.

publicly Indonesia has 200 jet fighters, comprising F-16 Fighting Falcons, A-4 climate Hawks, Hawk 200s and F-5 However, owed to a lack of spare parts, merely 12 F-5s, 10 F-16s and 25 Hawks are active.

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