The air force has reduced its headcount by more than 9,000 over the past three years and has completed 91 percent of its goals as a part of the Chingshih personnel streamlining project, government officials said yesterday.
Still left on the chopping block are another 800 personnel to be axed by July 1 next year. At that time, the air force is aiming to have just 55,000 personnel on its payroll, down from 64,000 before implementation of the Chingshih project three years ago.
Before the beginning of July, roughly 10,000 air force personnel will have been retired.
In addition to personnel, the service has reduced the units of the air force general headquarters and other high-level divisions of the service from 35 units to 24 units.
The figures were announced yesterday at the Ministry of National Defense's regular press conference.
"The air force has taken great efforts to push ahead the Chingshih project, which is one of the most important defense build-up tasks in recent years," said Major General Li Ku-fa (李貴發), director of the planning department of the air force general headquarters. "We have reached goals for different phases of the project through negotiation and communication."
Major General Liu Yi-tien (
"We have taken special measures to stop the situation from getting worse. We can not reveal what those measures are. But over the past two years, the number of combat pilots has started to grow again," Liu said.
The special measures, which Liu refused to describe, mainly involve an increase in allowances for pilots for flight missions as well as increased monthly salary.
RSS