With the COVID-19 pandemic gripping the world, it is easy to forget that there is a ‘parallel’ world in which pre-March 2020 concerns remain unresolved. For the Asia-Pacific region this means continuing tension with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over its territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea (SCS); on-going border tensions between India and Pakistan and India and the PRC, as well as continuing uncertainty about the short and long term intensions of North Korea’s ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong-un (and increasingly sister Kim Yo-jong). Combine these considerations with the area’s geography and the economic and social effects of the pandemic itself and it is not hard to see that intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities are to the fore and that air- and space-borne systems provide the best option for monitoring events in this vast region. It is with a sampling of the area’s airborne systems that the remainder of this article concerns itself.
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