On Monday morning, the Japanese Defense Ministry reported that a Chinese BZK-005 military reconnaissance drone conducted a flight between Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni in Okinawa Prefecture and Taiwan. Importantly, however, no infringement of Japan’s territorial airspace occurred.
This marks the fourth occasion the ministry has officially acknowledged the presence of an aircraft suspected to be a Chinese drone within this airspace.
According to the ministry’s account, the drone took off somewhere in the East China Sea, traversed between Yonaguni Island and Taiwan, then continued out above the Pacific Ocean. It then altered its course, veering away from the Sakishima Islands in Okinawa Prefecture and proceeded in the direction of the Bashi Channel in southern Taiwan.
