KC135 too close to EVA passenger jet

[armchairpilot94116]

https://taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2021/01/22/2003751022

A lot of activity around TAiwan these days. Chinese military bombers escorted by fighters crossing over into TAiwan's airspace. US military monitoring, etc.
How do these KC135 manage their flights? Do they check with air traffic control when they fly into controlled airspace ? OR the US military has some sort of AWACS provided air traffic management or what?
Please pardon the ignorance.

[BLURC2]

They should be in receipt of a service from Civ ATC. I'm not sure of the construct in that part of the world but if it was just a KC135 on transit, it would be treated like any other traffic.

If it was conducting AAR, so close to Civ airliners and the front-end wasn't in comms with ATC, then that is a recipe for a disaster. I've not seen the route for the KC135, but I'd assume it was just on a transit and the media are just hyping it up to something it wasn't?

Happy to be corrected

[armchairpilot94116]

Thanks reply. What if the tankers were on a mission. Do they notify ATC along their paths?

[BLURC2]

It would just depend on the airspace construct and whether it was just routine training or something more tactically relevant.

If it was, lets just say, taking place over Iraq or Syria then there would be a block of airspace established that the military own and therefore control everythig within it and civilian aircraft would keep clear.

Given the location, it's a bit of a strange one. There could be a US AWACS controlling the tanker, it's recievers and stopping them from trading paint with civilian airliners. I'd still suggest that ATC would have a mandatory avoid if that was the case.