Short video today that I’m posting vertically on YouTube but I wanted to show this to everyone because It’s so important.
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Periodically, China illegally enters Taiwan’s airspace. But lately, they appear to have pulled back to violation levels that are on par with activity last seen in 2021.
My Researcher, G. Michael Rapp, discovered this while he was doing research on an upcoming paper about the Navies of Asia and the numbers are pretty shocking. So leave a comment below thanking him.
Your Substack subscriptions pay for his salary.
The purpose of intelligence is to determine who is doing what and why. It’s the “Why” part that is gold. So I can think of a few possibilities.
1) The PLA could very well be facing fuel shortages or trying to cut fuel costs by not flying as many missions in and around Taiwan’s ADIZ.
2). The PLA may be cutting back as a gesture to the KMT (a Taiwanese political party that is sympathetic to China) and other political parties in Taiwan, hoping to secure some goodwill and drive a wedge between Taiwan and its partners.
3). The PLA saw the highest number of missions in and around the ADIZ in 2025, with limited results, which could mean the PLA brass saw the tactic as losing its effectiveness and has cut back to pursue other pressure tactics.
4). The PLA may be relying on using naval assets more than air assets for pressure campaigns, because they offer a more visible signaling of China’s resolve against Taiwanese independence. They’ve conducted some scarily impressive drills around Taiwan with their navy in the last few years.
5). It’s China: The damn country is a black box, and all of these or none of these could be possibilities. This is one of the exciting and frightening aspects of watching the PLA from afar, using someone else’s data collection as a lens into what is going on.
