China Triples Taiwanese Airspace violations

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

(Washington D.C.) The Chinese military has massively increased its sorties violating Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) starting in September 2020, more than tripling them from 2021 to 2023, a development which reflects Beijing’s interest in pressuring and intimidating Taiwan in a number of key and widely recognized respects. 

Certainly the large-scale uptick in violation flights, which jumped from 972 in 2021 to 3,119 in 2022, can be interpreted along the lines of several axes of thought, including war drills and invasion preparation, potential testing of newer technologies and related Concepts of Operation and of course conducting extensive surveillance of Taiwan and US surface and undersea assets.

China & Taiwan

An interesting and yet-to-be-published research essay called “PLA Flight Activity in Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone,” delineates some of the key conceptual and strategic parameters informing China’s stepped-up aggressive behavior.

“The ADIZ incursions occur for several purposes, with China’s overarching goal of putting military pressure on Taiwan and its international partners beneath the threshold of conflict. Regarding these growing incursions, three different factors: training, operational, and political, have already been briefly touched on in the essay written by Kenneth Allen, Gerald Brown and Thomas Shattuck. ( published by the Routledge Taylor and Francis Group in the Journal of Strategic Studies in June 2023.) (Kenneth Allen is a former Assistant Air Attache in Beijing and current independent consultant)

The research naturally identifies that the well known synergy or overlap between more frequent and larger numbers of ADIZ sortie violations correspond to politically sensitive developments such as major US and allied training in the region and collaborative visits from US or other pro-Taiwan officials.

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