A US military reconnaissance aircraft yesterday reportedly flew near Taiwan’s southern airspace, the same day the Ministry of National Defense confirmed that Chinese military aircraft had been seen southwest of the nation.
A US RC-135U Combat Sent was operating in the South China Sea, a flight chart posted on Twitter yesterday morning by military flight tracker Aircraft Spots showed.
Ministry spokesman Major General Shih Shun-wen (史順文) said that the armed forces are closely monitoring the nation’s surrounding waters and airspace, but did not confirm the aircraft’s movements.
Charts released by Aircraft Spots and Taiwan’s own records show that the latest mission sortie was the sixth time since March 25 that a US military aircraft was found to have been operating near Taiwan’s airspace.
The first three occurrences happened between March 25 and 27, while the fourth and fifth took place on March 31 and Wednesday.
Institute of National Defense and Security Research senior analyst Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said that the RC-135U’s flight near the Bashi Channel, between Taiwan and the Philippines, and into the South China Sea might have been to monitor unusual activity by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in the area.
Also yesterday, the ministry confirmed that several Chinese J-11 fighters, KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft, and H-6 bombers earlier in the day flew over waters southwest of Taiwan and then into the Bashi Channel.
Soon after entering the airspace over the channel, the aircraft returned to their base along the same route, the ministry said, but it did not disclose where the planes were based.
The sortie was the sixth time this year that Chinese military aircraft were seen operating near Taiwan’s airspace this year.
Without completed infrastructure and training, the expedited sale of new F-16s from the US could become a burden rather than a help, a military official said yesterday. Reuters on Thursday last week reported that Washington is looking to accelerate the delivery of 66 new F-16C/D Block 70 aircraft in response to what it sees as increasing intimidation by Beijing. Under the terms of the original US$8 billion deal signed in 2019, the US is expected to deliver a single-seater and double-seater for testing next year, then deliver the 66 new aircraft in batches of four or five from 2024 to 2026. The officials
SLIGHTS: Beijing intends to display pro-unification messages and prominently feature Taiwanese volunteers in its propaganda videos, an official said Taiwanese officials are poised to boycott next month’s Beijing Winter Olympics, an official with knowledge of the matter said yesterday, citing concerns that China would slight Taiwan during the Games. This year’s Winter Olympics are scheduled to open on Friday next week amid a diplomatic boycott by Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Lithuania, New Zealand, the UK and the US in response to China’s human rights abuses against Uighurs in Xinjiang and crackdowns on democracy advocates in Hong Kong. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said that a Cabinet-appointed task force has determined that Taiwan’s delegation would abstain from the opening and
INCREASED COOPERATION: Part of the funding is to be used to further the aims of a Taiwan-US human resources development platform launched in 2015, a source said An increase of ￥100 million (US$878,765) to Japan’s annual foreign affairs budget is for “advancing the Japan-Taiwan relationship,” information published on the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Web site showed. The ministry’s budget for last year was ￥1.7 billion; it was increased to ￥1.8 billion for this year. The ministry wrote that the additional funding was to be used for “cooperating with allies and like-minded countries to safeguard the universal values of the international community.” Regarding Taiwan specifically, the ministry said that it was “responding to an increasingly complex security and economic environment,” and that it aimed to “strengthen diplomacy and cooperation
A majority of Japanese feel friendly toward Taiwan, with almost half of respondents in a poll saying that they want to visit the country after COVID-19 travel curbs are eased, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan said yesterday. The office said that 75.9 percent of respondents said they feel friendly toward Taiwan, citing as reasons the friendliness and politeness of Taiwanese, the long history of ties between the two nations, and the strength of bilateral trade. More than one-quarter of respondents — 26.4 percent — said they had traveled to Taiwan, while 47.8 percent said they would like to
RSS