Surge in PLA Aircraft Incursions in 2024

This entry summarises a documented full-year trend rather than a single event. Across calendar year 2024, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) flew a record number of aircraft sorties into and around Taiwan's Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), sustaining pressure that intensified sharply from mid-May. Janes, drawing on Taiwan Ministry of National Defense figures, reported 3,615 PLA flights into the ADIZ in 2024, more than double the 1,669 recorded in 2023 and far above the 1,597 in 2022 and 972 in 2021. The Jamestown Foundation counted 5,105 total detected sorties around Taiwan in 2024 versus 4,711 in 2023.

The Jamestown Foundation documented a structural shift across the Taiwan Strait median line. It reported 3,070 sorties crossing the median line in 2024 against 1,703 in 2023, on 313 days versus 271, with the share of detected aircraft crossing the line rising from 36.1 percent to 60.1 percent. From April onward, crossings exceeded half of daily sorties on 209 days, compared with 62 days in 2023.

Two large surges were tied to PLA exercises. Janes recorded 49 aircraft in Joint Sword-2024A on 23 May 2024, three days after President Lai Ching-te took office. During Joint Sword-2024B on 14 October 2024, Taiwan's defence ministry detected 153 PLA aircraft in a single day, the highest one-day count it has recorded, as Focus Taiwan reported. The ADIZ is a monitoring zone, not sovereign airspace.

The 2024 totals are openly tracked PLA activity reported by Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense and analysed by independent bodies, so attribution to China is not in dispute. The intent is assessed as coercive grey-zone pressure: normalising routine median-line crossings, eroding the tacit Strait boundary, exhausting Taiwan's air-defence resources, and signalling displeasure at President Lai's inauguration and statements. The Joint Sword exercises functioned as punitive demonstrations rather than precursors to imminent conflict. Because the ADIZ is not sovereign airspace, these flights are lawful but escalatory in pattern.