Nine PLA aircraft cross median line as China stages another joint combat readiness patrol near Taiwan

China's military staged another so-called joint combat readiness patrol around Taiwan on Tuesday, 6 October, sending 14 aircraft and drones towards the island from mid-afternoon, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said. Nine of them crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered airspace over northern and central Taiwan while operating with Chinese warships, the ministry said in a press release issued that evening.

The ministry said its forces first detected the aircraft at 2.54pm local time. The types it listed were J-11 fighters, JH-7 fighter-bombers, Su-30 fighters, KJ-500 airborne early warning aircraft and Y-8 electronic warfare aircraft, together with unspecified drones. The ministry described the activity as harassment of the air and sea space around Taiwan carried out under the pretext of a readiness patrol.

Taiwan's armed forces tracked the flights using joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets and dispatched patrol aircraft, navy ships and shore-based missile systems to respond, the ministry said. Newtalk reported that the activity described in the release unfolded over roughly four hours before the ministry published its statement at about 7pm.

The release did not say how many PLA Navy ships took part or where they operated. The ministry normally publishes a fuller count of Chinese aircraft and vessels around Taiwan in its daily report the following morning, covering the 24 hours to 6am.

Smaller than September's patrols

Tuesday's patrol was smaller than the three most recent ones the ministry has reported. On 30 September the ministry said 21 aircraft were detected from 9.12am, 15 of which crossed the median line into northern, central and southwestern airspace, according to Newtalk. On 17 September the ministry reported 19 sorties from 8.45am, including H-6K bombers, with 15 crossing the line into southwestern and central airspace. In the 24 hours to 6am on 1 October, which included the 30 September patrol, the ministry counted 23 sorties, 16 median-line crossings, seven warships and seven government vessels, Lu noted.

By the count of Lu Wen-hao, a researcher at the Chinese Society for Strategic Studies, the PLA carried out four joint combat readiness patrols in September, on the 5th, 9th, 17th and 30th. Tuesday's flights make the 6 October patrol the fifth such operation reported by Taiwan's defence ministry in a little over a month.

Writing in The Storm Media earlier on Tuesday, before the latest patrol was announced, Lu said the PLA had held a joint patrol on 7 October last year ahead of Taiwan's National Day on 10 October, and that he expected it to pick a day of suitable weather for an October patrol before this year's celebrations. He noted that rain from the strengthening northeast monsoon had been expected to limit flights in the first days of October.

Timing around National Day

The patrol came during China's week-long National Day holiday, when Lu said the PLA traditionally raises its alert level across its regions. It also coincided with preparations for Taiwan's own National Day ceremony in Taipei, and the online outlet TaiSounds framed the flights as aimed at the rehearsal for the 10 October event.

Lu has argued that the Eastern Theater Command tends to time joint patrols around trips abroad by Taiwan's president or vice president and around other political or diplomatic moments, and that the mid-September surge was partly a response to two New Zealand navy ships transiting the strait on 18 September. Those links are his interpretation; neither Taipei nor Beijing has publicly tied Tuesday's patrol to a specific event.

Taiwan's defence ministry did not give a reason for the timing and repeated that its forces would continue to monitor Chinese air and sea activity and respond in line with its rules, Newtalk reported. Joint combat readiness patrols bring together aircraft and warships under the PLA's Eastern Theater Command and have become a recurring feature of Chinese military pressure on Taiwan.