TOKYO, April 15 (KUNA) -- Japan's Air Self-Defense Force scrambled its fighter planes 1,004 times in fiscal 2021 to intercept foreign aircraft, chiefly for Chinese planes, approaching Japanese airspace, the Defense Ministry's Joint Staff said Friday.
This marked the second-highest level for the year through March since comparable data became available in fiscal 1958, and sharply rose from 725 times from the previous year, it said.
By country, the largest number of operations in fiscal 2021 made against Chinese airplanes at 722 times, compared with 458 in the previous year and accounted for 72 percent of the total, mostly for intelligence gathering aircraft.
Japan and China are at odds in a dispute over the sovereignty of the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. Scrambling incidents against Russian planes were 266 times, up from 258 in the previous year. (end) mk.mt