Press release of the Ministry of National Defense

Time: January 9, 2024 at 16:15

     The Ministry of National Defense (MND) stated that as of 15:03 today (9^th), it had detected a satellite launch mission carried out by the CCP on the Long March (rocket family) carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan. The flight path of the rocket flew over the southern part of our island, different from what was announced in the early warning notification. The altitude was outside the atmosphere. The Armed Forces adopted joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems to closely monitor ballistic dynamics, trajectories, and other relevant information, and activated the air threat warning system to notify the public of the incident via text message. However, the MND would like to render an apology to the general public for the choice of words used in the original notification; an oversight in the English diction, which had not been updated recently, did not accurately indicate the fact that the launched object was, in fact, a satellite rather than a missile.