Free Republic

Japan scrambled fighter jets on July 24 after a Chinese military aircraft flew for the first time through international airspace near its southern islands out over the Pacific, in a move seen by Japan as underlining China's maritime expansion. Ties between China and Japan have been strained by a territorial dispute over uninhabited East China Sea islets and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won a decisive victory in Upper House elections on July 21. Japan's Defense Ministry said a Chinese Y-8 airborne early warning plane flew through airspace between Okinawa prefecture's main island and the smaller Miyako island in southern...

Like the U.S. C-130 Hercules, the Shaanxi Y-8 four-engine turboprop transport aircraft has been developed into many special purposes variants. The PLA Air Force was known to be have been using the Y-8 for special electronic warfare (EW) missions including electronic intelligence (ELINT) and offensive electronic countermeasures (ECM) in the past, but little was known about these programme until an electronic warfare variant Y-8 was first spotted in operation in Summer 2004. While detailed information regarding the onboard mission equipment is not available, it is believed that the new EW/ELINT variant Y-8 is equipped with an extensive array of sophisticated...