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Military wants equipment to monitor health of pilots and submarine crews

The military plans to introduce state-of-the-art biotechnology to track the physical condition of combat pilots and submarine crews, who run a greater risk to life than ordinary servicemen, according to defense sources.

The military is now communicating with several foreign companies to find the best product for the purpose. It is prepared to spend over NT$500 million on the project.

The military has equipment in its hospitals similar to what it needs for the project -- but the equipment presently in its possession lacks the speed and comprehensiveness necessary for the conditions pilots and submarine crews work under, sources inside the military said.

The air force would benefit the most from the new equipment, since it has the greatest number of servicemen in need of the technology.

Pilots of the second-generation fighters, including the US-made F-16, French-made Mirage 2000-5 and domestically-built IDF, need to have their condition monitored constantly, since the planes cannot be handled properly without pilots who are in peak physical shape.

In recent years, when checking the condition of second-generation fighters pilots, air force officials said, they have gotten some distressing results.

A senior pilot, for instance, was discovered to have brain cancer. He was thus relieved of flight duty and later retired early.

According to the air force, the best they can do before the arrival of new equipment is to ask combat pilots to report before each flight mission what he knows of his own physical condition.

The practice, adopted in 2000, may sound primitive, but it reduced air crash rates over the past two years. In 2000, the air force for the first time in decades had no crashes.
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