It's hard to call the collision of two multi-thousand-ton military ships "fortunate," but that's exactly what analysts are saying about the incident in the South China Sea this week that left a China Coast Guard ship with a heavily damaged bow after it hit a People's Liberation Army Navy guided-missile destroyer. Dramatic footage released by the Philippine Coast Guard showed the moment the collision took place, leaving the China Coast Guard ship missing a prominent part of its bow. Commodore Jay Tarriela of the Philippine Coast Guard said the incident occurred on Monday while personnel were distributing aid to Filipino fishermen near the disputed Scarborough Shoal, approximately 140 miles west of the Philippine island of Luzon. Tarriela said a China Coast Guard vessel was chasing the Philippine Coast Guard vessel BRP Suluan at "high speed" when the incident occurred. "Philippine vessels and fishermen encountered hazardous maneuvers and blocking actions," Tarriela said. He added that the Chinese navy ship then "performed a risky maneuver" which inflicted "substantial damage" to the China Coast Guard vessel's forecastle, rendering the ship "unseaworthy." Videos released by the Philippine Coast Guard on Monday showed People's Liberation Army Navy ship Guilin with hull number 164, a 7,500-ton Type 052D guided-missile destroyer, careening into the China Coast Guard (CCG) vessel 3104, as both chased the much smaller BRP Suluan Philippine patrol vessel. At least three China Coast Guard personnel can be seen on the bow of CCG 3104 at the time of impact, but there has been no word of any casualties from the incident. China has said a confrontation with Philippine vessels took place but has not so far confirmed a collision between its two vessels. Beijing, which claims almost all of the South China Sea as its sovereign territory, said its vessels were protecting that claim. Manila's actions in dispatching vessels to Scarborough Shoal "seriously infringe upon China's sovereignty and rights, significantly threaten maritime peace and stability, and are of a grave nature," Lin Jian, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Monday. Uninhabited Scarborough Shoal lies within the Philippines exclusive economic zone, but China has effectively controlled it with an almost constant coast guard presence in nearby waters since 2012, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. Analysts said the collision is a black eye for the Chinese military that could have turned into something much worse, especially because the Philippines is a mutual defense treaty ally of the United States, and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has said the death of a Filipino sailor in an incident of this type could be seen as an "act of war." The PLA "destroyer could have struck the much smaller Philippine Coast Guard ship instead. This would have almost certainly resulted in injury and death – even the sinking of the Philippine vessel," said Ray Powell, a South China Sea expert and director of SeaLight at the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University. "Then where would we be?" Powell asked. "Could the Philippines afford NOT to call this an 'armed attack'?" American officials have repeatedly pledged to defend the Philippines from any armed attack in the disputed waters, stressing Washington's "ironclad commitment" to the 1951 defense treaty. Powell and other analysts called the involvement of the highly advanced destroyer Guilin, commissioned in 2021, highly unusual and "overkill." PLA Navy ships usually stay "over the horizon," they said, ready to back up the smaller China Coast Guard vessels if they get into serious trouble. Powell, who monitored the confrontation via open-source tracking sites, said there was no indication of that on Monday, as China had at least seven Coast Guard ships and 14 maritime militia vessels in the area. In contrast, he counted only four Philippine vessels involved: two Coast Guards, one from the Bureau of Fisheries, and one commercial fish carrier. After reviewing video of the incident, analyst Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain, said the Chinese ships appeared to be "trying to sandwich the Philippine cutter between them, forcing it to take the water cannon blast at close range, down into its engine intakes, and one of the (Chinese) ships was supposed to bump it, hit its stern or otherwise cripple it." The maneuver "requires a lot of practice and coordination," he said. "They were trying a new, bold and intricate maneuver against a clearly well-prepared Philippine crew without either of those prerequisites and paid the price for it," Schuster said. Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy in East Asia at King's College London, said the Chinese maneuver exhibited "no seamanship-like behavior to speak of." "This was highly unprofessional and dangerous from intent to execution, and it eventually … punished one of the aggressors sustaining a disabling damage," Patalano said. Bringing in the larger PLA Navy ship was "overkill," said Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. The destroyer is armed with dozens of missiles designed to shoot down aircraft, sink enemy warships, or hit targets hundreds of miles away on land. The Type 052D ships are designed to play a key role in Chinese aircraft carrier task groups, according to a US military assessment. "It's overkill if you want to use such a high-tech vessel to do this sort of job," which is essentially law enforcement work, Koh said. The incident is illustrative of something experts have long feared in the contentious South China Sea; one mistake by one captain or pilot could lead to a superpower military confrontation. "Both Chinese assets display hostile intent to a point that when they seemingly miss the target they end up colliding – reinforcing the point that both safety distances and behavior were so aggressive that they couldn't avoid each other," said Patalano. Powell, of SeaLight, said such behavior has been encouraged by Beijing, citing incidents that go back as far as 2001, when a Chinese fighter pilot who was killed in a collision with a US Navy reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea was hailed as a national hero. "The incentive structure for military officers seems to bend toward aggression," Powell said. "I honestly wonder if this was an example of an overzealous PLA (Navy) captain stretching his rules of engagement," he said. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account atCNN.com