Japan’s Intercepts of Chinese Aircraft on the Rise

Japan said its fighter jets were scrambled on 31 occasions in May to head off suspected airspace violations by Chinese military aircraft, three more than the previous month.

In the month of May, Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force aircraft were given emergency launch orders 37 times, down from 41 in April, according to the Japanese Defense Ministry’s Joint Staff Office.

The data showed intercepts of Russian military planes were down to six from 13 in April, the first month of the fiscal year 2024, which runs until the end of March next year.

Approaching Russian aircraft were behind 16 percent of Japan’s air force scrambles, versus 84 percent for Chinese planes.

Russia and China’s defense ministries could not be reached for comment before publication.

U.S. treaty ally Japan shares maritime borders with fellow ally South Korea, as well as with some of America’s long-term adversaries: China, Russia and North Korea.

Tokyo disputes Moscow’s ownership of the Kuril Islands in the northeast, while Beijing is mounting a territorial challenge against the Japanese government’s decades-long administration of the Senkaku Islands in the southwest.

For years, Asia’s second-largest economy has logged notable sightings of foreign military aircraft and naval vessels near its territory.

Air intercepts are typically ordered against warplanes that enter its air defense identification zone, a self-declared buffer in international airspace. An intercept involves dispatching fast-moving, typically jet-powered aircraft to meet approaching foreign planes, military or civilian, in order to determine their identity and destination, and to ensure they do not enter territorial airspace, which extends 12 nautical miles from a nation’s coastline.

Newsweek‘s map shows Japan’s ADIZ, which roughly overlaps its exclusive economic waters. The zone covers the Senkaku islets disputed with China, but not the Russia-held Kuril Islands or the Liancourt Rocks controlled by South Korea.

In the previous fiscal year ending March 31, the Joint Staff Office said fighter aircraft were scrambled 669 times from air bases across Japan’s expansive island territory.

Over 70 percent of the launches were against Chinese aircraft in the west and southwest, Japan’s Joint Staff said. It has recorded scrambles against planes from Taiwan and North Korea in the past, although none has been reported this year so far.

In May, Japanese interceptors were scrambled against a Russian air force Il-20M reconnaissance aircraft, which swept Japan’s main islands. On May 27, Tokyo reported the sighting of a Chinese air force WL-10 attack drone near its southwestern islands.

China’s armed forces, which President Xi Jinping wants to turn into a “world-class” fighting force by mid-century, is modernizing with the introduction of more lethal unmanned aerial vehicles.

On Tuesday, the Japanese Defense Ministry said it launched fighter aircraft against a Chinese TB-001 combat drone, the eighth time since August 2021 that it has appeared in the East China Sea near its southwestern airspace.