Chinese Military Aircraft Suspected of Using Civilian Plane as Cover in Taiwan Strait

Cathay Pacific passenger jet takes off from Hong Kong International Airport on Oct. 21, 2020. Anthony Kwan/Getty Images

An airborne Chinese military aircraft recently ‘hid’ itself under a civilian airliner flying west of the center line of the Taiwan Strait.

On Sept. 24, Taiwan ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone), a military enthusiast group, posted on Facebook that at 8:30 a.m., it detected a Chinese Y-9 military communications command aircraft flying from south to north on the M503 route, west of the center line of the Taiwan Strait, for a short period.

What alarmed the group was that the Chinese aircraft’s flight path overlapped with the position of Cathay Pacific Airways CX366, which was flying from Hong Kong to Shanghai Pudong Airport.

“This is most likely an attempt to confuse Taiwan’s detection by using a civilian airplane to mask military aircraft,” the Taiwan ADIZ Facebook post reads.

The post suggests that it can be a tactic for military aircraft to hide underneath civilian aircraft as an act of deception.

In response to the Chinese aircraft’s overlapping with a civilian plane, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said on Sept. 30 that the national army can accurately monitor the activities of the Chinese aircraft.

For Taiwan ADIZ’s speculation over whether this is a new Chinese tactic to exploit civilian planes, the Taiwanese top military body provided no comment, reported CNA.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and has not ruled out the use of force to take control of the self-governing island.

Zhang Yanting, former Lieutenant General (Lt. Gen.) of the Taiwan Air Force, explained how such an overlap works in the war, saying that the position of the two airplanes is vertical, with the civilian airplane on top and the military aircraft on the bottom. They are at the same latitude and longitude on radar.

“When viewed on radar, it is the same point of light, and the two airplanes look like one airplane,” Lt. Gen. Zhang told The Epoch Times on Oct. 5.

Lt. Gen. Zhang further noted that such overlap could even camouflage multiple military aircraft under civilian planes, not just one.

Military ‘Test’

Although Chinese military planes frequently flew across Taiwan for various provocative actions, hiding underneath civilian planes has been rarely seen, Lt. Gen. Zhang said.

Military aircraft are not allowed to fly civil aviation routes as per international practice, he said.

So, “why did the CCP military aircraft have to take this way?”

Pilots of Chengdu Aircraft Corporation's J-10 for the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) march after performing a flight demonstration program at the 13th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, in southern China's Guangdong Province on Sept. 28, 2021. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

Lt. Gen. Zhang believes this is “a military test” that Beijing intentionally created to see how Taiwan would react.

Moreover, such a military test could developed. “They (the CCP) may later use fighter jets or multiple fighter jets simultaneously,” Lt. Gen. Zhang said.

“It could use 50 or 100 planes to do the test, thus staging a sort of ‘Trojan horse’ in the air: We cannot completely rule out the possibility, so Taiwan has to be particularly cautious,” he said.

Cases of Warplanes Disguised as Civilians 

The use of civil or fake civil aviation to deceive the enemy is not an exception in war, said Lt. Gen. Zhang, taking the example of the Israeli Air Force, which has successfully conducted such a military operation twice.

One was Operation Babylon in 1981, a sudden airstrike orchestrated by Israel that aimed to destroy a nuclear reactor near the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Israeli military dispatched eight F-16s with 2,000 pounds of bombs each, with six F-15s acting as shields. Those six F-15s pretended to be civilian aircraft flying in dense formations, which appeared to be the light spots of civilian aircraft from the radar.

Another was the Entebbe Raid in 1976, when the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) hijacked an Air France flight and landed it at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. The terrorists released the non-Jewish passengers and took over 100 Jews as hostages. Israel sent in commandos to kill all the terrorists in a surprise attack on a 4,000-kilometer-long flight disguised as a civilian aircraft.

Lt. Gen. Zhang said the two Israeli military operations were purely posed as civilian aircraft and did not use real civilian aircraft as a shelter.

Suspected ‘Human Shield’ Military Tactic

However, the speculated Chinese military plane was hiding underneath a real civilian aircraft.

Lt. Gen. Zhang raised the concern that “this situation would be equivalent to the CCP hijacking the plane and making it a ‘human shield’ for its military aircraft.”

A Taiwanese Air Force Mirage 2000 fighter jet lands at an air force base in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan on April 9, 2023. James Wu/AFP via Getty Images

Lt. Gen. Zhang estimated that thousands of civilian flights pass through the airspace around Taiwan daily as it is in an important international air corridor.

Adding more concerns, the Chinese military planes did not conceal themselves under U.S., Japanese, or South Korean flights but under Cathay Pacific civilian flights, which is “selective and intentional” because Cathay Pacific is a Hong Kong-based company, said Lt. Gen. Zhang, suggesting it is vulnerable to manipulation by Beijing.

In the CCP’s history, the regime has never cared about the lives and deaths of the populace.

One example was during the civil war between the CCP and the Chinese Nationalist Party (also named Kuomintang) in 1948, when the communist forces besieged the city of Changchun for five months.

To deplete the city’s food reserves, the communists forbade anyone to leave the city, and 150,000 people were estimated to have starved to death.

The Kuomintang later retreated to Taiwan.