BULLIES: China Massively Increases Fighter Jet Flights Above Taiwan.

According to Taiwan’s defense ministry, there were consecutive double-digit numbers of People Liberation Army aircraft operating around the island in the past week. On Monday, Taiwan said that 23 PLA aircraft and seven PLA ships were detected over the past day.

The number of Chinese planes flying near Taiwan hit double-digits on June 18 and remained at that level into this week. China regularly conducts patrols in the area, but according to one report, the numbers of planes and ships involved are higher than they have been in recent years.

The stepped-up patrols are taking place in the wake of the latest US arms sales to Taiwan. The Biden administration has agreed to sell Taipei Switchblade 300 and ALTIUS 600M-V drones at an estimated cost of $360 million.

In the last few years, China has dramatically stepped up the number of flights violating Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).

Previously: “Here is a rather simple fact: inside the procurement system we have – including kludge workarounds like DEPSECDEF Hicks’s ‘Replicator’ – if you believe that the window of greatest vulnerability for war with the People’s Republic of China is 2027 to 2032, which after initial skepticism I have grown to think is correct, then we will go to war with what we have now.”