The Chinese military on Friday flew a new electronic warfare drone near Japanese islands in the contested East China Sea as Beijing continues to expand its air force’s activities in the region.
The Joint Staff Office under Japan’s Defense Ministry regularly reports the movements of China’s military aircraft within its air defense identification zone (ADIZ), an area of international airspace where tracking and identification of foreign aircraft is required for national security purposes.
In its report published on Friday, the Joint Staff Office said a Chinese BZK-005 had flown over the Miyako Strait after transiting the East China Sea. The map attached in the report showed the drone circled over the waters south of Japan’s Okinawa Island before returning to mainland China.
The strait is an important gateway for the Chinese navy and air force in the event of deployment to the Philippine Sea and the wider Pacific Ocean. It forms the so-called first island chain, a choke point that starts from Japan in the north and extends southward to Taiwan and the Philippines.
The BZK-005 is a medium-to-high-altitude, long-range reconnaissance drone, capable of cruising at 111 miles per hour with an endurance of 40 hours. It is in service with the Chinese air force and navy.
Japan’s Joint Staff Office
The drone spotted by the Japanese air force is a new electronic warfare variant of the BZK-005, known as the BZK-005D, according to a blog post by Chinese Military Aviation. This variant features an electronic intelligence pod carried under the fuselage with blade antennas underneath the nose.
China’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a written request for comment.
The last time Japan reported a BZK-005 sighting was on August 28, 2023, when one of the drones transited over the waters between Taiwan and Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni. No blade antennas were visible underneath the nose the drone.
Japan Joint Staff
The United States military has informed its counterpart in Taiwan that China would deploy drones capable of conducting electronic warfare and jamming operations near the island, Taiwanese media reported on Sunday.
A report, citing a source from the island’s military, claimed that foreign experts have assessed that China has installed a variety of electronic warfare antennas and pods on some of its military drones with the aim of strengthening electronic warfare capabilities against Taiwan’s weapon systems.
The Chinese military has been operating around Taiwan on a daily basis. Some of its vessels and aircraft have transited the 67-mile-wide “Yonaguni Gap” between the Japanese island of Yonaguni and Taiwan, which worried the government in Tokyo. From Japan’s perspective, Yonaguni would be a front-line island if war broke out in the Taiwan Strait.
Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force on Friday released a monthly report on fighter jet scrambles in July. Aircraft were scrambled on 85 occasions in total to deal with approaching Chinese and Russian military aircraft, a slightly higher total than June’s figure of 81.
Most of the scrambles—72—were in response to Chinese aircraft flying close to Japanese airspace, while the other 13 scrambles were in response to Russian aircraft.
A majority of the scrambles were conducted by the Japanese air force’s southwestern unit, which is responsible for safeguarding the airspace around Japan’s southwestern islands on the boundary between the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea.