The Taiwan Air Force confirmed on the evening of June 17 that four sorties of J-7 fighter jets were included in the seven sorties of Chinese military aircraft which entered Taiwan’s southwest airspace that morning. This is also the first time that the Taiwan military recently announced the record of the J-7 “harassing” Taiwan’s airspace, according to Taiwan’s “Freedom Times” report. This is after the Chinese Air Force dispatched 28 sorties and 1 sortie of military aircraft to “harass” Taiwan’s airspace yesterday and the day before yesterday.
According to the Taiwan Air Force, 1 sortie of Y-8 long-range electronic jammers, 2 sorties of J-16 fighters, and 4 sorties of J-7 fighters flew into the airspace south of the median line of Taiwan Strait from the southern offshore of Fujian Province on the morning of June 17. They then flew out of Taiwan’s “air defense identification zone” in the southwest direction, and then flew north to mainland China.
According to the report, since Taiwan’s military announced its “real-time military status” in September last year, “Chinese military aircraft harassing Taiwan” are mostly the Yun-8 series slow-speed aircraft, while the J-10, J-11, and J-16 jets also took part in it. The J-7 fighter, which has been in service with the Chinese Air Force for more than half a century, is the first time being announced in the record of “disturbing Taiwan”.
Taiwan media also claimed that in recent years, it has been reported that mainland China has transformed the J-7 jets into drones. So are the J-7s just appeared drones? In this regard, the Taiwan Air Force stated that they were indeed J-7 fighters, not UAVs.
After the G7 Summit Joint Communiqué mentioned peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, more than 20 PLA military aircraft entered the southwestern airspace of Taiwan on June 15.
The J-7 (Chengdu J-7/F-7 fighter aircraft, NATO code name: Fishbed) fighter is a single-seater single-engine supersonic jet fighter developed by China’s Shenyang Aircraft Manufacturing Factory in the 1960s. It is a copy of the Soviet Union’s MiG-21Ф-13.
