Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) announced that its soldiers will start to shoot down intruding drones from China that fail to heed warning calls.
The announcement, made on August 28, 2022, came after photographs and video footage posted on Chinese social media platform Weibo showed Chinese drones violating Taiwanese airspace and taking close-up footage of Taiwanese soldiers. One piece of footage showed soldiers throwing rocks at the drone in attempts to either make it go away or knock it down.
Taiwanese military troops threw stones to drive away Chinese drones.#Taiwan #China
— Mete Sohtaoğlu (@metesohtaoglu) August 24, 2022
@savunmaisleri pic.twitter.com/KNrjIidySf
In its announcement, the MND said that in the event of a future drone intrusion, the army will take necessary countermeasures to drive away the drones, such as sounding whistles, broadcasting radio warnings, and firing signal flares, but if the UAV fails to leave, it will be “shot down”.
Over the past few weeks, the MND reported several incursions of unidentified Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) over the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands, off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The Taiwanese military responded by firing warning flares at the drones. The operator of the UAVs is unknown, although the defense command suspects it to be the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
