China sends 6 military aircraft, 5 naval vessels around Taiwan

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) tracked six Chinese military aircraft and five naval vessels around the country between.

The defense ministry said that six People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) military aircraft and five People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels were detected. The MND said the illustration of the flight paths was not provided as there was no trace of PLAAF aircraft crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait or entering the southwestern sector of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) during that time frame.

The MND said it monitored the situation with its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system and, in response, scrambled combat patrol aircraft, dispatched naval vessels, and deployed land-based air defense missile systems.

Since September 2020, Beijing has increasingly employed the use of “gray zone tactics” in the form of deployments of military aircraft and naval vessels over the median line and inside Taiwan’s ADIZ. According to CSIS, gray zone tactics are “an effort or series of efforts beyond steady-state deterrence and assurance that attempts to achieve one’s security objectives without resorting to direct and sizable use of force.”