A US Navy guided-missile warship and two military reconnaissance aircraft were operating near Taiwan over the past two days, after Chinese warplanes showed up in the area, the Ministry of National Defense confirmed yesterday.
The USS Barry, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, sailed through the Taiwan Strait from north to south, the ministry said in a news release, without specifying when.
However, media reported that the US destroyer transited the Strait on Friday, tailed by the Chinese missile frigate Nantong.
The Barry exited the Strait before dawn yesterday, a military officer said.
The US Pacific Fleet yesterday on Facebook confirmed the Barry’s passage through the Strait.
Accompanied by several photographs, the post was titled: “The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52) conducts underway operations in the Taiwan Strait.”
“Barry is forward-deployed to the US Seventh Fleet area of operations in support of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” a caption read.
Separately, a US Navy EP-3E Aries electronic reconnaissance aircraft was yesterday morning seen flying south of Taiwan, a flight chart posted on Twitter by Aircraft Spots, a tracker of military air movements, showed.
The sortie was the seventh time since March 25 that a US military aircraft has been seen passing near Taiwan, ministry data showed.
The ministry said that it has been closely monitoring the aircraft’s and vessels’ movements when near Taiwan’s territorial waters and airspace, but has detected no irregularities.
On Friday morning, Aircraft Spots showed a US military aircraft — an RC-135U Combat Sent — flying over the South China Sea. The aircraft is typically deployed to locate and identify land, naval and airborne radar signals from foreign military for analysis.
The US vessels and aircraft showed up in the area after Chinese J-11 fighters, KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft, and H-6 bombers on Friday morning flew over waters southwest of Taiwan and then to the Bashi Channel.
The RC-135U’s sortie might have been to monitor unusual activity by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the area, Institute of National Defense and Security Research senior analyst Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said.
Su added that the US might be sending a signal to some countries by allowing flight trackers such as Aircraft Spots to record the movements of its aircraft.
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