DEFENSE/Taiwan, U.S. quiet over latest transit by U.S. warship through Strait

Taipei, April 24 (CNA) The United States and Taiwan have been unusually quiet over the most recent passage of an American Navy warship through the Taiwan Strait that began late Tuesday evening, Taiwan time.

Private-sector observers who had detected the transit using commercial websites monitoring maritime traffic posted about it on social media on Wednesday.

The page Taiwan Security Monitor on X identified the vessel as the USS William P. Lawrence (DDG-110), an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

The transit began at 10:25 p.m. on Tuesday, and by 10 p.m. the next day, the vessel was located in waters off the southern municipality of Tainan, Taiwan. This was the vessel's last known location as of press time.

Meanwhile, the page "Taiwan ADIZ" on X reported the presence of a U.S. Navy MQ-4C reconnaissance drone flying close to Taiwan's main island as the U.S. ship was making the transit.

Using services provided by the Flightradar 24 website, "Taiwan ADIZ" said the drone had been flying close to Taiwan proper hours before the transit began.

However, the U.S. 7th Fleet, which has typically issued statements about its transits through the strait, and Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND) have kept quiet about the situation.

When asked by CNA for comment, the MND said it "had no comment" on the reported transit by the U.S. vessel.

Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a think tank, said the silence signaled the normalization of "freedom of navigation" in the Taiwan Strait.

"When U.S. aircraft carriers transit the Central Pacific, they do not purposefully announce that they are transiting the Central Pacific," Su argued.

China should take transits by foreign military vessels through the Taiwan Strait "with a calm mind," Su added.

Su said, however, that the U.S. vessel did "announce" its transit after all, just in a more "subtle" way.

Private-sector vessel trackers show that the vessel apparently turned on its Automatic Identification System (AIS) at the start of the transit and turned it off again near the end of it.

"By turning on its AIS, it already made [the transit] public," Su said.

According to Su, military vessels usually leave their AIS off to avoid exposing their location and turn them on in busy waters to avoid collision with other ships.

The People's Liberation Army's (PLA) Eastern Theater Command responded to the transit with a boilerplate statement.

Shi Yi (施毅), a spokesperson for the command, said on Thursday that the U.S. destroyer USS William P. Lawrence transited the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, criticizing the U.S. for "publicly hyping" the event, despite the absence of any official U.S. comment.

The PLA Eastern Theater Command organized naval and air forces to track and monitor the U.S. vessel's transit throughout its entire course, and effectively dealt with it in accordance with the law, according to Shi's statement.