The Ministry of National Defense (MND) on Tuesday (June 27) said if any Chinese military aircraft or “entities” enter Taiwan’s airspace or territorial waters and fail to heed warnings, it will strike back in self-defense.
At around 8 a.m. on Saturday (June 24), Taiwan’s military detected 19 Chinese military aircraft, including Chengdu J-10 and Shenyang J-16 fighter jets. Of these 19 aircraft, eight crossed the Taiwan Strait Median Line and approached Taiwan’s contiguous zone, which is 24 nautical miles off of the country’s coast.
During a regularly-scheduled press conference on Tuesday, Joint Operations Planning Office Director Major General Lin Wen-huang (林文皇) said that the armed forces will continue to closely monitor developments in the Taiwan Strait and if People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft and ships enter Taiwan’s “response area” (應變區), it will scramble combat patrol aircraft, dispatch naval vessels, and deploy land-based air defense missile systems to track and monitor their movements.
