Taiwan Shoots Down China Drone
Good Fun for Bored Good Guys
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Note to Reader: check out the second part of this article with details of accidental shelling of China from Little Kinmen.
2 September 2022
Taiwan Shoots Down China Drone
Good Fun for Bored Good Guys
By Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike)
TAIPEI - Reality is indeed stranger than fiction. On 2 August 2022, Taiwan military forces on its smallest defended outer islet of Shiyu Islet (獅嶼) shot down with live ammunition a mainland Chinese civilian drone buzzing them on Thursday.
This is not the first time small civilian drones have flown over Taiwan’s outer islands, but it is the first confirmed live fire contact involving Taiwan troops since an accidental shelling of China from Little Kinmen in 1994 (see end of this page for details).
To further amuse the reader, in a Twilight Zone kind of way, the islet was used as part of a movie set for the 2010 surrealist Japanese film Liar Game: The Final Stage. The islet served as a “clandestine military base” in the movie.
At only 0.007 square km or 8371 square yards, Shiyu Islet is the smallest military occupied islet under Taiwan control. The islet is located in Jinxia Water Tunnel (金廈水道) northwest of Kinmen, the islet sits 1 km or 0.6 miles from Little Kinmen and only 4 km or 2.5 miles from the southeast Chinese city of Xiamen.
On 30 August soldiers on Erdan Islet fired at a Chinese civilian drone before it returned to Xiamen marking the first time soldiers used live ammunition. On 31 August soldiers fired on three civilian drones that entered the airspace of three islets: Lieyu, Dadan, and Cao Yu, without destroying them.
Consider these books for additional information about Chinese UAVs:
Chinese C4I/EW (Vol. 1) (2022) Volume 1.
Chinese C4I/EW (Vol. 2) (2022) Volume 2.
Chinese Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (2016) Note this is Volume 1.
Chinese Rotary/VTOL Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (2016) Volume 1.
Chinese Seaplanes, Amphibious Aircraft and Aerostats/Airships (2016)
More Chinese Fixed Wing UAVs (2019) Volume 2.
More Chinese Rotary & VTOL UAVs (2019) Volume 2.
Taiwan Army Weapons and Equipment, including Marine Corps (2022)
In response, Taiwan’s military issued anti-drone jamming guns that disrupt radio frequency links for command and control. For a full list of Taiwan-made weapons for the army/marines: Taiwan Army Weapons and Equipment (2022).
Below is an example of my intense research on these types of weapons:
To be fair to the soldiers based on these islets, the fact is that they are ridiculously small and though they are scary close to China, boredom is their main preoccupation. In most cases, these rocks are nothing more than Cold War legacies that should be abandoned. Why? Because they have no strategic or tactical use. The soldiers on these isolated claustrophobic legacies have little to do than watch the Chinese tour boats circle them. Even I have waved back at these tour boats a few times: