TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND) tracked seven naval vessels and two Chinese military aircraft around the country between 6 a.m. Tuesday (April 23) and 6 a.m. Wednesday (April 24).
The defense ministry said that two People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighter jets had been detected in the Taiwan Strait. However, it did not indicate that any had entered the air defense identification zone (ADIZ) or crossed the median line.
The ministry said it monitored the situation with its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system. In response, it scrambled combat patrol aircraft, dispatched naval vessels, and deployed land-based air defense missile systems.
In April so far, the ministry has detected Chinese military aircraft 207 times and naval vessels 144 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."
