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.

The U.S. sent two warships to a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, where two Chinese ships recently collided while chasing a boat from the Philippines.