A U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon flies somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, Nov. 7, 2023. (Anthony Lagunes/U.S. Navy)
A U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft flew over the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday for the first time in five months and just days after German naval vessels made their own trip through the contentious waterway.
The P-8A Poseidon, a long-range aircraft equipped with an advanced sensor suite, flew through international airspace over the 110-mile-wide channel that separates mainland China from Taiwan, the U.S. 7th Fleet said in a news release Tuesday.
“The aircraft’s transit of the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the Navy said in the release. “The United States military flies, sails and operates anywhere international law allows.”
The flight began around 12:15 p.m. and concluded around 1 p.m., 7th Fleet spokeswoman Cmdr. Alison Maruca told Stars and Stripes by email Tuesday. She did not elaborate on the direction the aircraft traveled.
The transit was routine and not a response to any particular event, Maruca added.
The U.S. routinely sends warships and, less frequently, aircraft, through the strait. The Navy typically describes the transits as a routine means of traveling between the South China Sea and East China Sea.
China has “sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction” over the waterway, former Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in June 2022. He is now China’s ambassador to Cambodia.
Referring to the waterway as “international waters” is an attempt to manipulate China’s claim over Taiwan, he said at the time.
The communist government in Beijing views the transits as provocative and regularly condemns them as support for Taiwan. China considers the island a breakaway province that must be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.
China’s Eastern Theater Command had not publicly commented on the transit as of Tuesday afternoon.
A 7th Fleet Poseidon aircraft last flew over the strait on April 17, prompting Beijing to scramble jets to track the flight.
The Poseidon on Tuesday encountered foreign military forces, but the flight was not affected, Maruca said. She did not specify what nation or forces were involved.
“All interactions with foreign military forces during the transit were consistent with international norms and did not impact the operation,” she said.
Tuesday’s transit came four days after the German frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and support ship Frankfurt am Main made their own transit from the East China Sea and into the South China Sea. It was the first such transit by German ships in more than two decades, The Associated Press reported that day.
