TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Ministry of National Defense (MND) said late Friday morning (June 30) that it had detected an additional 24 Chinese military aircraft and five Chinese naval vessels around Taiwan since its report earlier the same day.

At 9 a.m., the MND said that nine People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) military aircraft and four People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels had been tracked around Taiwan between 6 a.m. on Thursday (June 29) and 6 a.m. on Friday. None of the aircraft had been reported as having crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or entered Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ).

However, at 11:20 a.m., the MND posted a rare mid-morning update saying that 24 additional PLAAF planes and five more PLAN ships had been detected around Taiwan. The aircraft types included Chengdu J-10, Shenyang J-11, Shenyang J-16, and Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets, as well as Xian H-6 bombers.

Of these aircraft, 11 crossed the median line over the Taiwan Strait. The MND said it is closely monitoring the situation with its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) system and, in response, scrambled combat patrol aircraft, dispatched naval vessels, and deployed land-based air defense missile systems.

In addition, the MND said that five PLAN naval ships were deployed to carry out joint combat readiness patrols with the Chinese military aircraft. In the month of June, China has dispatched 363 military aircraft and 155 naval ships around Taiwan.

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 the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 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."