TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND) tracked seven Chinese military aircraft and seven naval vessels around the country between 6 a.m. Monday (April 29) and 6 a.m. Tuesday (April 30).
The defense ministry said that seven People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft had been detected in the Taiwan Strait. The MND said two of them crossed the median line and three entered the southwest corner of the air defense identification zone (ADIZ).
The three PLA aircraft that entered the southwest ADIZ came within 90 km (49 NM) of Eluanbi.
The ministry said it monitored the situation with its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems and scrambled combat patrol aircraft, dispatched naval vessels, and deployed land-based air defense missile systems.
So far this month, the ministry has detected Chinese military aircraft 247 times and naval vessels 176 times. 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."
