Taps Coogan – October 5th, 2021

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The following chart from twitter user Amelia, based on data from the Taiwan Ministry of National Defense, shows the accelerating pace of Chinese air force incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone.

The colors represent different types of Chinese military aircraft. The J-16 is roughly equivalent to a US F-15 or F-18 jet.

As a point of reference, Taiwan’s entire fighter jet fleet consists of less than 300 jets, the most modern of which were acquired in 1999. 77 Chinese aircraft entered Taiwan’s defense airspace in just two days last week and nearly 100 entered for the week overall.

As we have previously noted, despite the real and immediate threat of a Chinese invasion, Taiwan spends less than 2% of GDP on national defense and, dollar for dollar, spends less than the Netherlands, an equivalently sized country surrounded on all sides by NATO and EU allies.

As with nearly all US allies and defense partners, Taiwan’s real national defense strategy is simply the United States’ armed forces courtesy of US taxpayers.

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