An abandoned airport in Ilan County has been partially restored by the military to become a test base for two types of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) developed by the Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology (CSIST).
The new test base for the UAVs will become operational today, when the live-fire demonstration of the Hankuang No. 19 exercise begins in Ilan. The Hankuang-series exercises are extensive joint-operations drills held annually.
The base, which cost the military tens of millions of NT dollars to rebuild, was used during the Japanese colonial period. It had been the base of some of Japan's kamikaze pilots.
For more than a month, CSIST technicians have been at the base testing two UAVs that they have developed.
The UAVs include a larger model named "Chung Hsiang" and a smaller one called "Kestrel." The two are still prototypes and have yet to go into production.
Even though they have been under development for several years, the Hankuang No. 19 exercise will mark the first time they are put on show to the public.
In today's live-fire demonstration, the Chung Hsiang and Kestrel will collect images of ships being targeted by three different kinds of anti-ship missiles, defense sources said.
The Chung Hsiang will shoulder most of the responsibilities since it has bigger payload and greater range.
A defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the UAVs will be used mainly for reconnaissance and that they could not to be used offensively.
"The UAVs developed by the US military have wider applications. They can be used as attack weapons. But our UAVs will not have such functions," the official said.
But the military has become more interested in UAVs since seeing the outstanding performance of similar machines used by the US.
Developments in China have also raised the profile of the UAV in the eyes of the military.
China has deployed along its southeastern coast a type of UAV armed with an anti-radiation missile developed by Israel.
The Israeli-made missile can severely damage radar sites on the ground, which is one of the reasons why the military is thinking of developing countermeasures based on UAVs.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,