TOKYO: A Japanese fighter pilot Lt. Col. Takamichi Shirota has said Japan is under pressure from the air. Observers have said it’s a pressure faced by few other nations, CNN has reported.

Japanese fighter pilots hear a siren blare more than twice a day, bolt up from their ready-room seats, run to their jets, and scream aloft, ready to intercept a potentially unidentified incursion into Japanese airspace, according to CNN.

This happened to Japan’s Air Self Defense Force (JASDF) as many as 947 times in the last fiscal year, the CNN has said adding that the culprit in most of those cases, warplanes from China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force.

Lt. Col. Shirota says the number of potential incursions is increasing.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, Shirota said the number of scrambles against airspace violations has been rising rapidly over the past decade — especially in the southwest air zone.

He said about 70% of the scrambles done by Japan’s SDF annually are conducted in the southwest area that includes the Senkaku Islands — known as the Diaoyu Islands in China — a rocky, uninhabited group of islands under Japanese administration but claimed by China as its territory, CNN has reported.

The report further states that it also includes Okinawa, home to the United States Air Force’s Kadena Air Base, which touts itself as the “Keystone of the Pacific” and is a key US installation for flights over the contested waters of the South China Sea.

The CNN report has also mentioned the release of a map by Japan’s Defense Ministry in March showing the flight routes of Chinese and Russian aircraft that Japan’s fighter pilots rose to intercept.

Japan has said Chinese planes often intrude into its Air Defense Identification Zone, which can vary in size depending upon location, according to the report.

The US Federal Aviation Administration defines an ADIZ as “a designated area of airspace over land or water within which a country requires the immediate and positive identification, location, and air traffic control of aircraft in the interest of the country’s national security,” it added.

CNN has quoted Shirota as saying that the Air Self Defense Force is the one and only entity able to protect Japan’s territory and airspace.

And though there have been no shooting incidents with the Chinese planes, it’s always a tense job, Shirota says, according the report.

The readiness of the Japanese pilots is remarkable when you consider their burden. No Western air force comes close to Japan in the number of times their fighter jets scramble against potentially hostile aircraft, CNN said.

It should be noted that the air forces of the 27 European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) combined flew less than half the intercepts last year than Japan did.

The CNN has quoted Lt. Col. Michael Wawrzyniak, chief public affairs officer for Allied Air Command in Germany saying, “I can tell you that over the 12 months period of 2019, NATO jets took to the skies approximately 430 times to intercept or visually identify unidentified aircraft that flew either in, close to, or towards NATO airspace.”

Across the Atlantic, US and Canadian fighters under command of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, has averaged just seven intercepts a year of Russian aircraft since 2007, said Capt. Cameron Hillier, a spokesperson for NORAD and the US Northern Command in Colorado, according to the report.

CNN has also referred to a Defense Ministry official said Japanese fighters are scrambling as soon as Chinese planes take off from their mainland bases in range of the Senkakus.

They had previously waited until Chinese planes headed toward Japanese airspace.

(With inputs from CNN)