TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Intrusions by Chinese military aircraft into Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in April soared by over 112% from March, possibly in response to President Tsai Ing-wen's historic meeting with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy early in Apri.

After Tsai's landmark meeting with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, China retaliated by launching the three-day "Joint Sword" exercises around Taiwan from April 8-10. China also imposed a no-fly zone north of Taiwan to launch a Long March 4B rocket on April 16.

Overall, in the month of April, 259 Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) military planes breached Taiwan's ADIZ. That represents a 112.29% increase over the 122 reported by the Ministry of National Defense (MND) in March.

On Monday (May 1), an open-source intelligence expert Damien Symon uploaded a map to his Twitter account showing the location of 249 of the intrusions by PLAAF aircraft into Taiwan's ADIZ. The majority of encroachments occurred along the median line and in the southwest corner of the zone.

However, there were some military aircraft that also circled into the southeast and east sections of the ADIZ. For the first time, a PLAAF aircraft completely encircled Taiwan sometime between 6 a.m. on Thursday (April 27) and 6 a.m. on Friday (April 28).

The TB-001 RECCE drone, dubbed the "Twin-Tailed Scorpion," entered the southwest corner of the ADIZ from the southwest edge of the median line.

It then flew to the southeast, east, north, and northwest sections of the ADIZ before exiting over the northeast end of the median line. This marks the first time that the MND has publicly acknowledged that a TB-001 RECCE UAV had encircled Taiwan in this way.

Symon pointed out on the map that there were also aircraft incursions in the southeast corner of the ADIZ, where the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) aircraft carrier the Shandong was spotted lurking.

A chart created by Ben Lewis, an independent defense analyst, shows that the trend line for violations by Chinese combat aircraft of Taiwan's ADIZ spiked significantly in April. The number of days on which Taiwan's ADIZ was violated by PLAAF aircraft also rose by 40% from 20 in March to 28 in April.

The approximate total of PLAAF sorties into Taiwan's ADIZ from 2018 to 2023 has reached 3,721.