China sends drones circling Taiwan in new surveillance tactic
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Beijing has ramped up military actions near Taiwan in recent years.
PHOTO: AFP
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TAIPEI – China’s military sent a drone circling around Taiwan for the second time in a week, the island’s defence ministry said on Wednesday, signalling a new surveillance tactic as cross-strait tensions remain high.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) flew a BZK-005 drone – a long-range reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle – around much of the island’s sensitive air-defence identification zone, according to flight paths released by Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence.
The drone flew from the north and around the eastern side of the zone, according to the flight paths, before turning south and then flying back west – circling much of Taiwan. The flight happened at some point in the 24 hours ending at 6am local time on Wednesday, the defence ministry said.
The event appeared to be the second time the PLA has flown a military drone in this type of circular path around Taiwan, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News based on defence ministry releases. The ministry began regularly publishing PLA flight patterns publicly in September 2020.
The first occurrence involving a circular flight path happened late last week, in the 24-hour period ending at 6am on Friday. Previous PLA drones flew shorter paths around the defence zone.
Taiwan’s National Security Bureau is monitoring the drone situation closely, deputy director-general Chen Chin-kuang said on Wednesday in response to questions from lawmakers.
“So far, no intelligence shows that China plans to use drones to create gray-zone conflict,” he said. “We will work with allies to stay on top of early warnings.”
The drone and warplane flights come as Mr Steven Rudder, the retired commander of the US Marine Corps Forces Pacific, led a delegation of defence contractors to discuss the joint development of military hardware, including drones and ammunitions, with Taiwanese companies at a defence industry forum on Wednesday.
Speaking on the sidelines of the forum, Mr Rudder told reporters that Taiwan – along with the rest of the world – “is learning from” Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“We’ve seen smaller UASs (unmanned aerial systems) take a very prominent role and we’ve seen ground forces in distributed manners are able to create a factor of defensive firepower within an urban environment in ways that we haven’t explored before,” he said.
This technology “allows you to create coverage in areas where you don’t have conventional forces”.
Beijing has ramped up military actions near the island in recent years, including near-daily warplane incursions across the Taiwan Strait. Last year, the PLA nearly doubled the number of military flights around the island compared to a year earlier to more than 1,700.
US-China tensions have also risen over Taiwan, which has sought greater ties with Washington in the face of rising pressure from Beijing. President Tsai Ing-wen met with former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last year and current speaker Kevin McCarthy last month. Those events sparked outcry from Beijing, which claims the island as its own territory.
The PLA held three days of military exercises around Taiwan after the McCarthy meeting, saying that it stands “ready to fight at any time and crush separatism activities and foreign interference.” BLOOMBERG, AFP
