Chinese military drones fly through Japan's southwestern islands as Koizumi warns of new ways of war

Japan's defence minister Shinjiro Koizumi said on Tuesday 20 October that a flight by Chinese military drones through gaps in Japan's southwestern island chain the previous day showed that Japan must prepare for new ways of fighting and for the spread of unmanned aircraft. The Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighter jets in response to the flights, which the ministry's Joint Staff had announced on Monday.

According to the Joint Staff, a Chinese BZK-005 reconnaissance drone and a Y-9 intelligence-gathering aircraft flew in from the East China Sea between the morning and the afternoon of 19 October, passed between the main island of Okinawa and Miyako Island into the Pacific, circled over the ocean, turned back and crossed between the same two islands again before heading towards the Chinese mainland. On the same day, a TB-001 drone, which Japan classifies as a reconnaissance and attack type, flew between Yonaguni Island and Taiwan into the Pacific, travelled as far as the waters off Amami Oshima, then turned around and returned through the gap between Okinawa and Miyako. Fighters from the Air Self-Defense Force's Southwestern Air Defense Force were sent up to respond.

Koizumi told reporters that it was the first time since June last year that Japan had confirmed and published a Chinese military drone passing between Okinawa and Miyako, and the first such case in the current fiscal year. He added that on 14 October a drone presumed to be Chinese had also flown between Yonaguni and Taiwan into the Pacific.

The minister said drone activity around Japan had become markedly more intense in recent years. The ministry published 23 cases of Chinese military drone activity in fiscal year 2024, roughly three times the eight cases of the previous year, and 16 cases in fiscal 2025, which he described as a continuing high level. Koizumi said the ministry is working on a revision of Japan's three strategic security documents and that the latest flights illustrate the need to respond to new forms of warfare and to drones. He said he wanted to explain these changes in the security environment carefully so that the public would understand them.

FNN reported that on 14 October the ministry also confirmed a Chinese WZ-7 reconnaissance drone flying over the East China Sea, and that the Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighters in each of these cases. Trafficnews reported that the Joint Staff released Air Self-Defense Force photographs of the WZ-7, a large jet-powered high-altitude drone with joined wings that is sometimes compared to the US RQ-4 Global Hawk, with a wingspan of about 23 metres and an operating altitude estimated at around 18,000 metres. It said the released images showed the drone flying higher than the Japanese fighters sent to intercept it.

A reporter at Tuesday's news conference asked whether the drone and Y-9 flights near Okinawa should be read as a response to the large joint US-Japan exercise that began on 19 October. Koizumi said that when dealing with a counterpart that does not behave conventionally, even ordinary assumptions about intent must be questioned. He said the ministry would analyse the intentions behind the flights calmly and had published the facts so that the public would understand why Japan needs defence capabilities able to respond to any situation.