How China is masking drone flights in potential Taiwan rehearsal

The operations represent a new element in China's expanding presence across the South China Sea and around Taiwan. Read more at straitstimes.com.

HONG KONG - A large Chinese military drone has conducted regular flights over the South China Sea in recent months while transmitting false transponder signals that made it appear to be other aircraft, including a sanctioned Belarusian cargo plane and a British Typhoon fighter jet.

Military attaches and security analysts scrutinising the operations say the flights represent a step-change in China's grey-zone tactics in the contested South China Sea and appear to be testing possible decoy capabilities in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Since August, at least 23 flights have been logged under the call sign YILO4200, a known long-endurance Chinese military drone, but the aircraft transmitted registration numbers of other aircraft, according to Reuters analysis of data from flight-tracking website Flightradar24.

The flight paths often head east from the Chinese province of Hainan towards the Philippines, near the disputed Paracel Islands, and down Vietnam's coast, the flight analysis showed.

Reuters is reporting the scale and complexity of the operations for the first time.

The operations represent a new and elaborate element in China's expanding presence across the South China Sea and around Taiwan as its military responds to Communist Party demands to sharpen the readiness of its forces, according to three regional diplomats, four open-source intelligence analysts and three security scholars familiar with the flight data. The activities include exploiting electronic warfare and deception tactics in real time, they said.