Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has published a daily count of detected PLA aircraft, naval vessels and government ships every morning since 2020. It is the most consistently maintained open-source series in the Indo-Pacific, and for four years it moved in one direction. Summed across the first six months of 2026, the fighter component comes to 1,334 sorties — less than half the figure for the same period in 2025, and the lowest operational tempo since 2023.