 Taiwan, China trade barbs over island drone incursions Taipei (AFP) Aug 30, 2022 - Taipei and Beijing have traded barbs over a recent string of drone sorties from the Chinese mainland to an outlying Taiwanese island, as Taiwan's president Tuesday vowed "strong countermeasures" against such incursions. Photos and video taken by Chinese drones of the Kinmen islands have been circulating on both Taiwanese and Chinese social media, with one video showing Taiwanese soldiers hurling rocks at one to drive it off. While visiting air force facilities in offshore Penghu islands, President Tsai Ing-wen said China had used "greyzone" tactics such as drone intrusion to continue its "military intimidation" against Taiwan. "I want to tell everyone that the more provocative the enemy is, the more calm we need to be... we will not provoke a war and we will restrain ourselves, but that does not mean that we will not take countermoves," she told the troops stationed in the archipelago in the Taiwan Strait. Tsai added that she had ordered the defence ministry "to take necessary and strong countermeasures at an appropriate time to defend the security of our airspace". Asked to comment on the videos Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the incursions were not "anything worth making a fuss about" as the drones were "flying around Chinese territory". But that response triggered an angry riposte from Taipei, which compared the drone harassment to the acts of a "thief". "Those who come uninvited are called thieves, whether they are breaking through the door or peeping from the air, the people of Taiwan do not welcome such thieves," Taiwan's foreign ministry said in a statement late Monday. "The authoritarian expansionist government of the Chinese Communist Party has always made harassing other countries a daily routine, and therefore its title of a 'regional troublemaker' is well deserved." Taiwan lives under constant threat of invasion by China, which claims the self-ruled democratic island as part of its territory to be seized one day -- by force if necessary. Drone incursions over Kinmen have increased at the same time Beijing embarked on a show of force in retaliation for US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan earlier this month. For a week after Pelosi's visit, China sent warships, missiles and fighter jets into the waters and skies around Taiwan, its largest and most aggressive exercises since the mid-1990s. It is not clear who is flying the drones from the Chinese mainland. Kinmen lies just a few kilometres off China's coast, meaning a civilian could feasibly fly a commercial drone that distance. However China has also stepped up so-called "greyzone" tactics against Taiwan in recent years to pressure the island. "Greyzone" is a term used by military analysts to describe aggressive actions by a state that stop short of open warfare and can use civilians. Civilian Chinese fishing and sand dredging vessels, for example, have increasingly entered waters around Taiwanese outlying islands in recent years. China has also ramped up incursions by warplanes into Taiwan's air defence identification zone, an area it previously tended to avoid. Taiwan's defence ministry has so far only fired flares to warn off the drones but it has said it will take "necessary countermeasures", including shooting down the drones if needed.
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Russia has begun receiving Iranian combat drones to be used in the Ukraine war, but many of them have already proven faulty, the US military said Tuesday.
"Russian transport aircraft loaded the UAV equipment at an airfield in Iran and subsequently flew from Iran to Russia over several days in August," said Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder, using the initials for unmanned aerial vehicle.
"It's likely part of Russia's plans to import hundreds of Iranian UAVs of various types," he said.
However, Ryder said, "our information indicates that UAVs associated with this transfer have already experienced numerous failures."
He did not offer evidence for that claim.
After both sides have deployed and lost large numbers of surveillance and attack drones over the six months of the war, Russian are importing two types from Iran: the Mohajer-6 and the Shahed-series UAVs, according to the Pentagon.
Russian forces intend to use the Iranian UAVs for air-to-surface attacks, electronic warfare, and battlefield targeting.
Ryder said Moscow turned to Iran in part because sanctions and export controls directed at Russia by Ukraine's allies have made it harder for Russian industry to produce their own.
Iran seizes, then releases US Navy drone vessel: Pentagon
Washington (AFP) Aug 30, 2022 -
An Iranian ship seized an American military unmanned research vessel in the Gulf but released it after a US Navy patrol boat and helicopter were deployed to the location, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
The US Central Command's 5th Fleet said a support ship from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, the Shahid Baziar, was spotted towing the seven-meter (23-foot) Saildrone Explorer unmanned surface vessel (USV) late Monday.
The US naval drone, equipped with an array of sensors, radars and cameras, was in international waters collecting navigation and other unspecified data, the 5th Fleet said in a statement.
When the Iranian vessel was seen towing the unmanned boat, US forces sent the USS Thunderbolt coastal patrol ship, which was operating nearby, to the scene.
In addition, an MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter based in Bahrain flew to the location.
Those actions "resulted in the IRGCN vessel disconnecting the towing line to the USV and departing the area approximately four hours later" without further incident, the 5th Fleet said.
"IRGCN's actions were flagrant, unwarranted and inconsistent with the behavior of a professional maritime force," said Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Naval Forces Central Command, in a statement.
"US naval forces remain vigilant and will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows while promoting rules-based international order throughout the region," he added.
With solar panels and a sail wing five meters tall, the Saildrone Explorer is driven by solar and wind energy and can be deployed on missions on the ocean for up to one year, monitored remotely by a human pilot.
It can collect a broad range of oceanic, navigational and meteorological data, as well as strategic intelligence.
The 5th Fleet stressed the vessel was US government property but that the technology it carries is "available commercially" and "does not store sensitive or classified information."
The US Navy first began operational testing of the USV in the Gulf of Aqaba last December.
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