TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan's Defense Ministry has doubled the number of fighter jets scrambled in each response to foreign airplanes approaching its airspace on the back of China's intensifying military activities around the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, government sources said Saturday.
Japan's Air Self-Defense Force began scrambling four fighter jets since last year in each case of potential airspace violation by foreign aircraft, they said.
The ASDF previously sent two jets in each scramble since it began such missions in 1958.
The number of scrambles by Japan and China has been surging in areas near the Japan-controlled, China-claimed Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture where the two countries' air defense identification zones overlap.
The two countries have yet to establish a communication mechanism to avoid any accidental aerial or maritime clash.
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