reported<\/a><\/span> a record 20 PLA aircraft entering Taiwan\u2019s ADIZ on March 26.<\/p>\nJessica Drun, a non-resident fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, told RFA that \u201cthese gray zone activities are an attempt to wear down Taiwan psychologically and from a resource perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is happening against the backdrop of ever-deepening U.S.-Taiwan ties, a domestic population in Taiwan that has more or less rejected China\u2019s framework for cross-Strait relations, and an increasingly assertive Beijing the world over,\u201d Drun said.<\/p>\n
Although Taiwan is a self-governing democracy, Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory, to be annexed by force if it deems necessary.<\/p>\n
While the drones currently operating near Pratas are likely to be for reconnaissance or testing Taiwan\u2019s resolve, PLA researchers have written about the possibility of using armed unmanned systems in combat scenarios that would involve Taiwan.<\/p>\n
For instance, PLA researchers have recently published studies on using unmanned surface vehicles, drone swarms and helicopter-like UAVs during amphibious landing operations, such as efforts to invade Taiwan or seize small islands like Pratas and Itu Aba.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Michael Mazza, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said that Pratas Island may be an \u201cattractive target\u201d for China.<\/p>\n
\u201cChina might one day wish to occupy the islands, either as a first step in an assault on Taiwan, as a means of coercing Taiwan into unification, as a way to test international responses to an attack on one of Taiwan’s offshore islands, or as part of an effort to reenforce control over the South China Sea,\u201d Mazza said.<\/p>\n
Taiwan and China are just two of the claimants in the disputed South China Sea. The others are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.<\/p>\n
Even as China has been turning up the heat to assert its sweeping land and sea claims in the South China Sea and to pressure Taiwan, other militaries are making their presence known as well.<\/p>\n
A U.S. carrier strike group conducted a bilateral military exercise with the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) in the South China Sea on Tuesday and Wednesday, the U.S. Navy announced in press release.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two days exercise aims to strengthen the bilateral relations and military diplomacy,” the RMAF said in its own statement. The exercises are to “enhance the operational interoperability and overall cooperation among the two forces,” it added.<\/p>\n
Dizhwar Bukhari<\/em><\/strong> in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\nThis post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taiwan said Wednesday that it is willing to shoot down Chinese drones that have been flying near Taiwan-occupied Pratas Island in the South China Sea, a response to\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111544"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111545,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111544\/revisions\/111545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}