It appears the only defense Taiwan has over China’s drone is throwing rocks… Commentators on both sides of the strait are taken aback as this means the island has no defense whatsoever against drone… They call this a ‘Stone Age Humiliation’.
Taiwan to install drone defenses after video posted on Chinese social media of soldiers throwing rocks
Some Taiwanese social media users labelled the incident a “humiliation”.
Taiwan Drone Defense is no better than what the Croods could do during the Stone Age!
“What’s that UFO?”
“It’s called a ‘Drone’, made by primitive people with help of Warmonger Lockheed Martin from the 21st century.”
“And the rocks must be the New version Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) concocted by Raytheon the maker of murderous gadgets and gizmos?”
Taiwan will begin deploying drone defense systems on its offshore islands after footage emerged of Taiwanese soldiers throwing stones at a Chinese drone that buzzed a guard post.
Taiwan has complained of repeated Chinese drone incursions near its offshore islands as part of China’s war games and drills after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei this month, which infuriated Beijing.
China claims Taiwan as its own territory, despite strong objections of the democratically elected government in Taipei.
The brief video clip, circulated first on Chinese social media before being picked up by Taiwanese media, shows two soldiers throwing stones at a drone that approached their guard post.
In a statement late Wednesday, the defense command of Kinmen, a group of Taiwan-controlled islands that sit opposite China’s Xiamen and Quanzhou cities, said the incident occurred on August 16 on Erdan islet.
The statement confirmed the soldiers had thrown stones to see off what it called a civilian drone.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said in a separate statement that it would deploy anti-drone systems next year, which would first be placed on the smaller islands.
“Officers and soldiers at all levels will continue to implement vigilance in accordance with the principle of ‘not escalating conflicts or causing disputes’,” it added.
China has not commented on the footage, which has received millions of views on Chinese social media where users made fun of it.
It has also triggered heated discussion in Taiwan, with some social media users calling the incident a “humiliation” for the island’s armed forces and urging the defense ministry to step up its countermeasures to the increasingly frequent drone incursions.
The Kinmen defense command said the footage was another example of China’s “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan and an attempt to “denigrate” its armed forces.
Wang Ting-yu, a senior member of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, described the incident as “very serious” and questioned why Taiwan’s defense ministry did not respond to the incursion.
“The drone was flying on top of our soldiers on guard but there’s zero response,” he said.
“If you just let them come and go freely, this was negligence of duty.”
Taiwan has controlled Kinmen, along with the Matsu islands further up China’s coast, since the defeated Republic of China government fled to Taipei after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists in 1949.
At its closest point, Chinese-controlled territory is only a few hundred meters from Kinmen.