The air force yesterday scrambled to warn away 18 Chinese aircraft that entered the nation’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), the Ministry of National Defense said, part of what is a regular pattern of incursions that has angered Taipei.
Taiwan has complained of repeated such missions by Chinese aircraft, which have become a common occurrence over the past two years or so.
Taiwan is in a heightened state of alert due to fears China could use Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to make a similar military move on the nation, although the government has not reported any signs Beijing is about to attack.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of National Defense
The number of aircraft involved was well off the last large-scale incursion, 39 Chinese aircraft on Jan. 23, and since then, such flybys have been with far fewer aircraft.
The ministry said the latest mission included six Chinese J-11 and six J-16 fighters, as well as two H-6 bombers.
There was no immediate comment from the Chinese Ministry of National Defense. China has described previous such missions as to defend the nation’s sovereignty and to counter “collusion” with foreign forces — a veiled reference to US support for Taiwan.
The bombers, accompanied by a Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft, flew to the south of Taiwan through the Bashi Channel that separates the nation from the Philippines.
The other aircraft flew over an area to the northeast of the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) at the top end of the South China Sea, according to a map provided by the Taiwanese ministry.
Taiwanese fighters were sent up to warn the Chinese aircraft and air defense missiles were deployed to “monitor the activities,” it said, using standard wording for how Taiwan describes its response.
No shots have been fired and the Chinese aircraft have not been flying in Taiwan’s air space, but in its ADIZ.
Japan this week reported eight Chinese naval vessels, including an aircraft carrier, passed between islands in Japan’s southern Okinawa chain, to the northeast of Taiwan.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS