What increased military activity over Taiwan tells us about China's threat

Sean Corbett: Welcome to the World of Intelligence, a podcast for you to discover the latest analysis of global military and security trends within the open source defense intelligence community. Now onto the episode with your host, Harry Kemsley.

Harry Kemsley: Hello and welcome to this edition of Janes' World of Intelligence, your host Harry Kemsley, and as usual, my co- host Sean Corbett. Hello, Sean.

Sean Corbett: Hi, Harry.

Harry Kemsley: Hi. Now, we've spoken about activities in and around Taiwan before, but quite recently we had a, I think, very insightful report, special report written by one of our colleagues here at Janes who I'll introduce shortly about the activities, I think unusual amount of activity actually around Taiwan. I thought it'd be really good idea to get the author of that report in, one of our journalists, Akhil. Akhil Kadidal. Hello, Akhil.

Akhil Kadidal: Hello. Thanks for having me on the show.

Harry Kemsley: Not at all. Thank you for taking the time, and thank you as well for the report. For the listeners who are interested, we'll try and get a link to the report added to the podcast access that you've created, because I think it's a very, very insightful report to what it is we've been seeing and what it might mean. So Akhil, if I can, just for the audience that don't get a chance to read your excellent report, could you first of all just give us a summary of what it is that you've seen and why that might be important?

Akhil Kadidal: Yeah. From 2024 China began to escalate the scale of its military aircraft incursions into Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone, which is an airspace set up to identify and monitor foreign aircraft. The data from the Taiwanese MND shows that China set a new record essentially for the number of incursions in 2024, significantly from May onwards when the new Taiwanese president took office. So the ultimate... What we're seeing as this kind of incursions being the sign of, as escalation of Chinese operational tactics, testing new strategies for A- to- AD flights over the Bashi Channel. And other strategic kind of operation that they're mounting.

Harry Kemsley: So when you say an increase, and it was a record, are we talking about by a few percentage points or was it a really significant lift?

Akhil Kadidal: 50%. That was it. 50%.

Harry Kemsley: 50%. Wow.

Akhil Kadidal: Compared to previous years. Yeah.

Harry Kemsley: Right. And has there been any difference in the type of activity? So the volume of activity has gone up by 50%, but has there been any specific indications of the kinds of activities? Are we talking about suppression of their defense kind of activity, or have we been talking about support to surface ops kind of activity, or both? What kind of activities have we seen?

Akhil Kadidal: Well, this really began in mid- 2023. When China began to kind of increase the number of sorties into the ADIZ. But what really happened, what we started seeing was more complexity in operations. We started to see in- flight refuelers tagging along with fighters, operating over the south of Taiwan. We saw a significant amount of incursions over the median line, which is the de facto border between the two countries. The crossings of the median line are part of an effort by China to kind of mitigate the value of the median line, render it meaningless. And they've been doing that and they've been continuing those kinds of activities for quite some time now. But what we're also seeing is, in the past we saw China using bombers to traverse around the island, circumnavigate the island. But now we're seeing them using unmanned aerial vehicles to circumnavigate the island. And they're doing this to test also Taiwan's reaction. How is Taiwan monitoring PLA activities on the west coast? How is it doing it on the east coast? And also we are seeing China operating over the Bashi Channel and all the Western Pacific. And again, we have these UAVs loitering in the area, monitoring how Taiwan is reacting to these kinds of activities. So there's increasing complexity in the operations.

Harry Kemsley: Is there any reciprocal flights of this type from Taiwan towards China at all, or is it entirely from China towards Taiwan?

Akhil Kadidal: One of the things that Taiwan quickly discovered, the Chinese have been operating aircraft in the area since the late'90s. So Taiwan has increasingly found that it's very expensive to react to every single sortie. It's super expensive in fact. There was once a Taiwan M& E report that said that they had 16... Per hour operating costs was$9, 800. So in 2021, Taiwan decided that it's not going to intercept every single aircraft that the Chinese send over, right? They're going to use a ground- based radar to monitor these activities. So what we're seeing, Taiwan is not reacting to every single incursion and they don't have to, at the end of the day. All they want to do is monitor these aircraft.

Harry Kemsley: Right. So Sean, I'm curious, we're seeing this massive upturn in activity. What do you think people are saying in the headquarters that you've spent time in about that? Are they seeing that as significant? Are they thinking about that as a potential precursor to any future work?

Speaker 4: So I think the details analysis will come. It's not just about the numbers, it's about complexity. So if they're exercising COMAOs, so composite air operations where, as Akhil said, if you've got refueling, if you've got your inaudible, if you've got DW, all that sort of support, then that becomes more of a consolidated dress rehearsal for something that might come later. But equally, if they are combining with naval activity and to extent ground- based air defense activity, then it really leads into their modernization assertions where we're going to get to a place in a few years, not many years, actually, 2027 is the intent, where they've modernized their forces to an extent that they can actually do combined arms operations. And to that extent, they've probably learned quite a lot from the Russian incursion into Ukraine. So we would be very much looking about it, the mantra, threat equals capability plus intent plus opportunity. So the capabilities are one thing. So modern aircraft, fifth generation, there's a bit of that going on. Intent is how they are actually using them. So while they're developing their tactics, techniques and procedures. And then the opportunity is what the other side is doing in terms of allies and all the rest of it, including the Taiwanese. So we'd be looking at it from that perspective all the way from the strategic right, all the way down to the tactical.

Harry Kemsley: Right. I'm curious, are we seeing it being single service? Is this an air force activity or are there air force with navy, with maybe marine forces involved?

Akhil Kadidal: Air force with navy. We've seen PLAAF aircraft operating alongside or in the vicinity of carrier- borne aircraft. Also, the plan also operates airborne early warning and controlled aircraft. And we've seen evidence that these aircraft are also operating in the south of Taiwan area. So it is combined operations in many ways.

Harry Kemsley: Combined operations, which are by far the most complicated and therefore needs to be practiced a great deal.

Akhil Kadidal: And also, I might add one more thing.

Harry Kemsley: Go for it.

Akhil Kadidal: Which is, we're seeing aircraft from other theater commands within China. From Central Theater Command, from Southern Theater Command.

Harry Kemsley: That was my next question. That was my next question, exactly that. Are they doing this from local forces only or are they actually massing force and bringing it together?

Akhil Kadidal: There's evidence to say that... Sorry.

Harry Kemsley: Sorry, go ahead, Akhil.

Akhil Kadidal: Yeah, that means it's evidence to show that they're bringing in aircraft to forward airfields near the Taiwan Strait to send them across into the ADIZ. And this is all part of an overall familiarization kind of theme that they have. They want to condition multiple units to have familiarity over future operations over the Taiwan Strait and around Taiwan, north, south and the east coast.

Harry Kemsley: So you've got now multiple units across the Chinese military who are being trained in multi- domain operations.

Akhil Kadidal: Precisely.

Harry Kemsley: inaudible and a potential operation in and around Taiwan.

Akhil Kadidal: Yeah.

Harry Kemsley: So that I mean, at risk of sounding a bit simplistic about it, does that not sound like rehearsal to anybody else? I mean, that feels a bit more than posturing. Because if you all were trying to do was create a sense of geophysical statement, you could do that on a much smaller scale, couldn't you? You could do that on a scale that was probably back in 2021/22, based on what you said, a level of activity that was demonstrating you had intent, but not really, really strong intent. This feels much more positive, much more specific, doesn't it?

Akhil Kadidal: Yeah, but I feel like there's several aspects to the Chinese response and the Chinese activity in the ADIZ. One is, it is intimidatory, yes. They're trying to intimidate Taiwan, because the level of activities rose after the new president took office in May 20th, 2024. But there's also other aspects to that. There's also, they introduced new air aircraft to test them in an operational setting. And a key example of this is their Y8 Shaanxi. Y- 8 and Y- 9 special mission aircraft. We're seeing frequent iterations, improved iterations of these aircraft entering service. These aircraft are not too numerous in service, maybe one or two aircraft of each type. But they do appear around Taiwan and they're used for electronic warfare, testing Taiwan's radar defenses, testing the response time of the ROCAF, which is the Republic of China Air Force, Taiwanese Air Force. So we're seeing whenever China introduces a new kind of technology, they kind of fly these aircraft into the ADIZ to use them in an operational context. Which includes, by the way, engine technologies as well, improved engines. Which is the WS- 10.

Harry Kemsley: So they're taking the opportunity to familiarize their air crews, their navies, and they're working them together. They're bringing in forces from around China to ensure they've all had the same exposure, but they're also inaudible, maybe doing test and evaluation, late stage development of platforms and engines, as you just said. Presumably that's good for us though, isn't it, in terms of intelligence gathering. We get to see how they operate, we get to see how they mass force, what kind of forces tend to operate together, how they operate. And this is also a benefit, intelligence value to the Taiwanese.

Speaker 4: It is, and it's an absolute balance. So they're not going to want to give everything away, but equally they've got to in some sort of operational environment, test their... Command and control is a really big one. So they need to develop their command and control and have been doing that actually. That's both within... So I understand that, I believe that the land- based naval air force has now been subordinated, resubordinated to the air force itself now. Which makes coordination better. There's obviously coordination with their own ground- based air defense systems. So we will learn quite a lot about how they are intending to do business. The unknown would be, okay, how much of that is trying to get us into a position where we are seeing that as the new norm. So right, we now understand their doctrine, their tactics, their developing tactics and all the rest of it, so therefore we can react against it, and they'll do something completely different. I mean, it's easy thing to say, but it's not easy thing to do as you know better than anybody in terms of when you're exercising, you have to follow specific drills and it's not as easy as going, " Right? We're going to do that forever and then we can do something different." I think the phrase, mass still matters. They've got over 1200 4th generation aircraft, fighter aircraft. That's huge. So they don't necessarily need to be that clever with the tactics. They just need to make sure that they get them right. And we'd be looking at that quite hard actually. And how different elements of the force, if indeed they are, are operating together.

Harry Kemsley: Quantity has a quality all of its own, as they say. Akhil, I'm fascinated to dig a bit further in terms of the, so what, of this. But before we do it, let me just step back for a second and think about, the how? How did you get to these insights? Because as a journalist, your job is about reporting and giving your reader an understanding of things. But to get there, you've been through a process, to use the T- word we use frequently, the trade craft of what you do as a data journalist. Could just the audience give an insight into... So how did you do it? How did you get the information, verify it, before you got to writing what I think is an extremely good report?

Akhil Kadidal: Well, Taiwan has been releasing daily bulletins on the ADIZ incursions since September, 2020. So what I did when I first joined the company three years ago, I started a database. I went back and collated every single day from 2020 to 2022 when I first started with the company. And then I kept up the database, and after our military events team took over, kind of coordinated with them to ensure that the data was up to specs. Which was number of aircraft, types of aircraft, location of flight, flight path analysis, and also timing sometimes. They'll provide timings. Which was, we realized quickly the data showed that China doesn't like operating at night, for example. But now they have, from 2023 on, they decided that they will try to operate from night to a degree. All this is official Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense data that they release on their website and on Twitter. China on the other hand, doesn't release much information about its activities. We get a glimpse sometimes from state- owned media, and sometimes their own ministry of national defense. Beijing inaudible Ministry of National Defense. They put out numbers, they put out some facts, they put out statements. I'm trying to corroborate the two. Ultimately what we're doing is we are trusting the Taiwanese that they're giving us the facts. And we assess it based on what we know, what we can cross- reference with our own data that other teams are collecting in such central events.

Harry Kemsley: And one of those things presumably is, you can also reach out into the other databases available to you in terms of, you know the inaudible, you know the inventories. You know where inaudible.

Akhil Kadidal: Precisely.

Harry Kemsley: Therefore you can validate to an extent from that. Okay. So having now collated all this information, you got this database running and tracking it, is there anything else other than social media or anything else you can use that might help you validate some of the things you're seeing or hearing? Are there other reporters talking about the same things, for example?

Akhil Kadidal: Covering the Chinese aviation, you get a sense of which aircraft are being produced, which aircraft are being transferred to units. We have Janes' satellite imagery analysis, which kind of helps corroborate the presence of aircraft, specific aircraft, at specific air bases. These are all tools that we have been using for several years now to kind of corroborate the information.

Harry Kemsley: Very good. All right. Now let's just step back then to the topic of what we're seeing, what we're learning from it. You described very, very, very well in the report what's going on, the differences we've seen in recent times in terms of types of aircraft, types of operations, the complexity and so on, where they're doing it, all of those things that you would need to get a sense of what the new normal looks like. And Sean, I'll come to you with the same question in a second. What are we learning about the capability of the PLA? What are we finding out about them in their ability? You've mentioned complexity increased, you mentioned night flying as well, by the way, is a significant step. I can remember that from my own time. What are we learning about them as an organization in terms of their competence, do you think?

Akhil Kadidal: What China's been doing is it has been incorporating a significant amount of combat platforms that will help it achieve combined arms, and... Well, in terms of they're building more in- flight refuelers, they're producing more special mission aircraft to support the fighters. We're seeing the fighters traversing a greater distance because this is also due to increased engine efficiency, by the way. The production of J- 16 4. 5 generation fighters has increased in China. And more and more units are replacing their older aircraft with this new kind of 4. 5 generation fighter aircraft. We haven't seen any fifth gen aircraft in the ADIZ, as far as... But this could just be that Taiwan is not reporting that. Because they don't want China to realize that they could track these aircraft. In terms of what capabilities we're seeing. We're seeing them able to operate in a more cohesive manner around Taiwan. We're seeing coordination to a larger degree. And I also mean coordination with carrier- borne forces. We are also seeing sometimes tankers... Not tankers, transport aircraft, operating in the ADIZ. This could be for paratroop operation in the future. But let me also say that one of the problems that we've had with analyzing the data over the last 12 months is that after the new president, Lai Ching- te. He came into power, there was a data downgrade. In the sense that Taiwan stopped releasing a lot of the information that they were releasing previously. This has caused some constraints, but we can still figure out where the primary areas of operation are. And these are consistent with previous PLA operations across the median line in the southwest area and in the east coast. Which is again, reflective of, again, all the things that they want to do, which is they want to control the Bashi Channel, they want to prevent... They want to cut off Taiwan from external help in the future. These are all capability- building exercises. And regarding dress rehearsals, I just want to get back to that for a minute. I mean, we can't say with any certainty that China will attack Taiwan at some point in the near future. It may happen eventually, but all these are part of enhancing their own internal capabilities to kind of condition their units for a future war.

Harry Kemsley: Yeah, they're going to the gym as they say, sometimes inaudible. So Sean, I'm curious, without straying across any lines, what kind of things will organizations that you've worked for be seeing that we can't see from an operational perspective?

Speaker 4: Well, that's an interesting question. So they'll have a good idea of the electronic environment. So E- link inaudible strategic level, which we'll never be, or not to the same degree anyway live to that. In terms of the intent at the higher military and strategic levels, I don't know, but China's a notoriously difficult intelligence target. So that's probably as far as I'll go in that. So from an open source perspective, particularly with the Taiwanese sharing so much information, which they're doing for very obvious reasons, and there's no reason to think that they are either making it up or exaggerating, then the actual operations themselves, the routes they're taking, how many aircraft are flying at one time, that's probably going to be pretty accurate.

Harry Kemsley: Yeah, I guess, Sean, just touch on that for one step further. When we spoke with Xavi and others from this conversation in the past about indicators of warnings, we've talked about the fact that China and Taiwan have a huge amount of economic relationship. And although these events that we've been rightly talking about here are of significance militarily, they don't necessarily become harbingers of an invasion. There's no doubt there's some scope within the activities to suggest they're getting ready or better at being prepared for, but there's nothing in the indicators of warnings we've seen from previous discussions that suggest this is now more likely. This to your point about capability, is improving capability, but it's not necessarily changing intent, right?

Speaker 4: Right. It's the imminence that's the issue right now. They want the options to be able to do it. So as you mentioned, there's a big difference between capability in terms of numbers and equipment, and how will you use it. Which is why it's so interesting what's happening right now. But we've relearnt it the hard way with Ukraine, just looking at the numbers of T- 72 tanks and all the rest of it does not necessarily mean that they're going to take Kiev in this case in three days. And the same is true here. But what I think is happening is that the Chinese recognize that. So they are making sure that they have got the actual capability, both in terms of the tactics, the experience, and the other things. But back to your I& W piece, and this is as important, but it's only one element of it, and this is where you've got to take the whole thing holistically. In a different conversation earlier we were talking about the new landing craft docks that have just been developed. They're pretty specific. You're doing that for a reason, you're not going to do that just to message. So you bring all that in, and then at the more strategic level, you look at the intent, what is going to be a response potentially by the US? Has that changed? So they'd be looking again very closely to Ukraine. But also the economy. If it's deemed that actually the response by the world, the US, et cetera, is not necessarily going to be extreme and ruin their economy as some people are saying, then it might be worth doing something. And I'm not saying that's a full invasion, but it might be scalable. But that's where you've got to look at everything. So you mentioned earlier about some of the limitations. Their carrier operations are still pretty embarrassing to be fair. Their aversion to night flying, the close air support, which they've never really done in great detail from the air, their sort of long- range logistics is always an issue as well. And overall sustainability. Because China is a very big place and they've got other things to worry about as well. So we'd start to see, I think a lot more moving towards that theater, which would hopefully give us a good understanding of if something is serious as inaudible.

Harry Kemsley: Yeah. Intent is changing. So Akhil, just going back to yourself, in terms of what you have seen and the change that you've described, is there a sense that there is more yet to be done that the Chinese have got a lot more yet to do and that they've got the capability maybe elsewhere in China, but they haven't brought it to bare yet? Is there anything else out there that we haven't seen yet that might give us a sense that, " Okay, they are done. They are ready. If they need to go capability- wise, inaudible."

Akhil Kadidal: Well, as I mentioned, we don't have an idea yet about the fifth generation aircraft. At some point, if Taiwan starts to actually disclose that they have been tracking J- 20 fifth gen or the J- 35, then we'll know that China is being rather serious about how it operates over the ADIZ. At the moment there's still... Let's not even talk about the fifth gen. We can talk about other capabilities like 4. 5 J- 16s for example. We're not really seeing any sort of inaudible interaction with the amphibious forces yet. We haven't really seen that. There was an instance back in August, 2024 when the PLA Army, the ground force decided that it's going to use commercial ships, commercial tankers, to use them as air bases in the center of the Taiwan Strait to kind of support helicopters. Attack helicopters, transport helicopters, reconnaissance helicopters. So they could operate closer to Taiwan. So we did see that, but there's no real coordination yet between the air force and the army about how it's going to support amphibious forces when they're attacking Taiwan. And it's no easy thing to really attack and conduct an amphibious operation. Right? I made a note here, at the shortest length the distance between mainland China and Taiwan is 79 miles, a 127 kilometers. At its longest, it's 110 miles, 180 kilometers. Distance during the Battle of Britain, the distance between shores inaudible England and France was 26 miles. And Hitler could not conduct a cross- channel island invasion because of air power, British air power. And China will need to wipe out Taiwanese air power in order to conduct an amphibious assault, and it's not going to be easy for them to do it.

Harry Kemsley: Yeah, yeah. Well, it certainly sounds like there's a few more things left on the to- do list for the PLA before it was completely ready. Certainly amphibious inaudible support I'm sure would be a major, major undertaking inaudible for sure. All right, let me then start to bring this conversation for now to a close. And what I'll do, Akhil, in a second is, I'll ask you just to give me one takeaway for the audience that you'd really want them to remember from all the work that you've done, that they can take away as a conclusion, a summary. Sean, for you and I, I think what this conversation does, it adds another layer, doesn't it? To the Taiwanese- China discussions we've had. We've talked about the geopolitical, we've talked about the indicators and warnings, and now we've got some tangible evidence that their capability element of the algorithm, the threat algorithm is being strengthened. We should come back to this again. One of the things I would ask Akhil before I come into the question about what's the one takeaway, is that you keep us informed of how this is developing. Because I think if we could bring together yourself with Xavi from the inaudible intelligence with what we're seeing on the actual activity front, it would make a very compelling discussion in terms of what are all these things mixing up to look like in Sean's frequently articulated risk algorithm. So we'll come back to that for sure, and thank you in advance for saying yes, when we invite you back for the next edition. But to come back to the question, If you had the chance to speak to the audience and give them one takeaway from this whole situation, what would it be?

Akhil Kadidal: China is going to continue to escalate its activities. It's going to use more and more new aircraft that are introduced into service to test them operationally. It's going to use it to not only build up its operational expertise, but intimidate China. It'll increase gray zone activities, which we don't really cover in detail in news, but I must mention that we've seen 156 balloons China sent over Taiwan. Since start of 2024. These balloons, as far as I know, have no real military value. They're supposed to tie up Taiwanese resources into tracking them. That's what they want. This is going to continue as long as China feels that Taiwan is headed down a separatist or independence path. It's going to continue. Will it result in a flash points? I don't think so. There have been times when China's crossed into Taiwanese airspace, but nothing has really happened. They haven't gone the full distance. And I feel that China is to a degree cautious about how it behaves in the ADIZ. They are very cautious because they don't want to create a military situation that they're not prepared to handle, because Japan has expressed support for Taiwan. Of course, you have the United States also that could step in. But the escalation will continue for a long time.

Harry Kemsley: The escalation will continue. Thank you. Sean, what about yourself?

Speaker 4: No, I agree with that, and I think that what it does show is that China is deadly serious about modernizing its military. It said it's going to, it's putting a lot of money in there and it's doing it in an operational context, which makes sense. So I think from that perspective. But it is still, however antagonistic it is, and I agree with Akhil, it is measured. It's calibrated. It's still only one element that we'd need to see of many elements, which we have talked about before, in terms of us deciding that actually something is going to happen.

Harry Kemsley: Yeah, I agree with all of that. I think the only thing I would add to both of your good points then is going back to the trade craft, the value of watching something over a long period of time means you can spot the trends and the abnormal, unusual.

Akhil Kadidal: Precisely.

Harry Kemsley: And that's what you described right at the beginning there, that we had a 50% increase in activity compared to the pattern of life we've seen previously. That for me is the underscoring in black ink, the importance of long- term expert observation of things, to really be able to identify the unusual or the abnormal. Akhil, thank you so much for joining us on an important topic. We will invite you back to discuss this again. I know that Taiwan is going to be on the agenda for us as a news item certainly for a long time to come, and we'll get you back as soon as we can. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Akhil Kadidal: Thank you for having me on, gents.

Harry Kemsley: Pleasure. And for our audience, thank you for listening. As ever, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to let us know directly, and any questions or comments you might have for Akhil, come through us and we'll get them to him. For the audience, we'll be covering Taiwan again in the future, but if there are other topics you'd like us to cover as well, also let us know that. Thank you for listening.

Sean Corbett: Thanks for joining us this week on the World of Intelligence. Make sure to visit our website, janes. com/ podcast, where you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts, so you'll never miss an episode.