Today's D Brief: China expands live-fire plan around Taiwan; Senate OKs Finland, Sweden's NATO bids; New Pentagon spox; And a bit more.
BEN WATSON and JENNIFER HLAD | AUGUST 4, 2022 10:38 AM ET
THE D BRIEF ARMY CHINA NATO
Saber-rattling, extended. China’s military added a day and a live-fire zone to its previous four-day plan with six danger zones for nearby aircraft and naval vessels, according to Taiwan’s Maritime Port Bureau and reporting by Taiwan’s Liberty Times. The new plans would make China’s drills “the largest ever around Taiwan,” according to the Japan Times.
Already, China has launched nearly a dozen missiles into the waters around Taiwan, including to the southwest and northeast of the island, according to Taiwan’s military. In an apparent new first, Japan’s defense ministry said five of those ballistic missiles landed near Hateruma Island, in Japan’s exclusive economic zone (extending 200 nautical miles off the coast). Four of the missiles allegedly flew over Taiwan’s capital city of Taipei, according to the Japan Times, reporting separately on Thursday. Tokyo’s military chief Nobuo Kishi condemned the launches as “extremely coercive,” and called them “a grave issue that concerns our national security and the safety of the people,” according to Japan’s Kyodo News.
Why it matters: It could be a practice for a future invasion. And indeed, one Chinese general, Maj. Gen. Meng Xiangqing, said nearly as much in a televised interview Wednesday, according to the New York Times. “It should be said that although this is an exercise resembling actual combat, it can at any time turn into real combat,” he warned. Wider considerations include the possibility that the next time China’s military extends what appears to be its current short-term blockade of Taiwan that “it will last weeks,” Dmitri Alperovitch tweeted Thursday morning. China could again extend those drills, effectively closing off Taiwan’s ports for “months or until they get concessions or invade. This is how [an invasion of Taiwan] begins.”
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/08/the-d-brief-august-04-2022/375376/
