China’s military is practising ship-launched strikes on Taiwan from the east, Taiwan’s defence ministry indicated on Monday, as Beijing’s retaliatory military drills entered their third day.
The defence ministry did not give the positions of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ships it had detected, but a map of PLA aircraft detections show four J-15 fighter jets east of Taiwan, in the western Pacific, on Saturday.
The J-15s have never been seen inside Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) before, and are known to be launched from two PLA aircraft carriers, including the Shandong which had been tracked by Taiwan and Japan sailing past Taiwan into waters to its southeast late last week.
On Monday Japan confirmed its military had responded to the drills, scrambling jets in response to the PLA’s aircraft launches.
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On Saturday, Beijing launched three days of military exercises targeting Taiwan in response to Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, meeting the US house speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in Los Angeles last week.
The drills have not matched the scale of those launched in retaliation to a Taipei visit by McCarthy’s predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, which included missile launches, but do appear to show an escalation in the Chinese military’s training for strikes on Taiwan, observers said.
In the 24 hours to 6am Monday, Taiwan’s defence ministry detected 70 PLA aircraft and 11 ships inside its ADIZ. The ADIZ is a large area monitored for defence purposes, and the PLA assets did not enter sovereign Taiwan territory.
However, the ministry said 35 of the planes had crossed the median line – a de facto border in the international waters of the Taiwan Strait.
The launch of J-15s suggested the PLA was “practising strikes on Taiwan from an encirclement-style posture”, independent defence analyst Ben Lewis told the Guardian.
The PLA also claimed to have simulated joint precision missile strikes on “key targets” in Taiwan, according to state media and an animation posted online by the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command which depicted attacks on Taipei and Kaohsiung from missile bases on the Chinese mainland.
Taiwan’s defence ministry on Monday repeated that it was operating under a principle of “not escalating conflicts and not causing disputes”, but had conducted response drills including shore-based anti-ship missile vehicles and rapid deployment of missile speedboats.
The J-15 fighter jet launches also prompted a military response from Japan. On Monday its ministry of defence confirmed it had scrambled jets after recording take-offs and landings by about 80 fighter jets and 40 helicopters from the Shandong.
Japan’s ministry also provided tracking maps of the Shandong and four other ships in its company, revealing it to have moved closer to Taiwan’s east coast between Friday and Sunday. – Guardian