A Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) drone looped Taiwan flying from north to south during the 24 hours ending at 6am on Wednesday, the Ministry of National Defense said, marking the second such PLA maneuver conducted in recent days.
The drone was one of 27 PLA aircraft and seven warships that were detected in the waters around Taiwan over the period, the ministry said in a statement.
The BZK-005 reconnaissance drone looped Taiwan proper clockwise starting from the north, flying south along the east coast and crossing through the Bashi Channel on its return within the nation’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), a map released by the ministry showed.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of National Defense
The ministry said it monitored the situation and tasked aircraft, navy vessels and land-based missile systems to respond.
The movement follows a similar activity by a PLA Tengden TB-001 combat drone, which made a similar loop in the counterclockwise direction in the 24 hours ending at 6am on Friday last week.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense's Joint Staff Office released a map on Tuesday showing looping PLA drone movements over the waters east of Taiwan heading generally southward, although it did not name the class of drone.
Photo courtesy of the Japanese Ministry of Defense's Joint Staff Office
Lu Li-shih (呂禮詩), a former navy lieutenant commander, said that the drone likely entered the ADIZ before Japanese aircraft made visual contact, which is why it did not know the class.
The relatively incomplete flight map also shows that Japan’s radars cannot detect as far as the Bashi Channel, but since it confirmed it was flying in that direction, it shows a significant exchange of information between the Taiwanese and Japanese militaries, he said.
National Security Bureau Deputy Director-General Chen Chin-kuang (陳進廣) told legislators on Wednesday that the bureau is closely monitoring the situation.
Asked whether China intends to use drone activity to create “gray-zone conflict” or push red lines it has avoided in the past, Chen said the bureau has not identified any specific plans so far, but is working with its partners to gather intelligence.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS