Shooting down all Chinese balloons flying over Taiwan would be a waste of ammunition and “exactly what China wants,” a senior defense official said yesterday.
Colonel Wang Chia-chun (王家駿), deputy head of the Ministry of National Defense’s joint operations planning section, said that the military would not shoot down the balloons, which have been entering Taiwanese airspace daily since the beginning of the year, calling it a waste of ammo and the exact response Beijing is seeking.
During a regular ministry news briefing, he said that the military’s standard response is to issue alerts and closely monitor the balloons’ movements, particularly if they fly near more densely populated areas.
Photo: Wu Su-wei, Taipei Times
The military would also watch for any balloon debris in Taiwan, he added.
The daily dispatching of balloons toward Taiwan is part of China’s “gray zone” tactics in the lead-up to Saturday’s legislative and presidential elections to “harass and rattle Taiwanese,” the ministry said.
It urged the public to remain calm in the face of China’s cognitive warfare attempts and not to be influenced by them.
The armed forces have so far this year not detected any debris from Chinese balloons, ministry intelligence officer Colonel Huang Ming-chieh (黃明傑) said.
Although Huang did not say if the ministry believes the balloons are intended for espionage purposes, he said that all military units were ready to deploy anti-espionage measures, without elaborating.
The military would respond differently if the balloons are believed to have the potential to cause damage in Taiwan, ministry spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) said, without elaborating.
The military has generally assessed the balloons as being used for meteorological purposes, a conclusion drawn in part from its investigation of debris found in February last year around Lienchiang County’s Dongyin Island (東引).
The ministry last year said that similar equipment has been regularly detected in the air and sea around Taiwan, most often between December and February, because seasonal winds bring the balloons closer to Taiwan.
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