The air force yesterday corrected a misbelief that Chinese fighter planes could reach Taiwan in 17 minutes, saying they could do so in just 10 minutes.
The correction was made by the Taichung-based 427th Fighter Wing, which is composed solely of domestically built Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDF), during a trip arranged by the Ministry of National Defense for the media.
The 427th wing is based in Tai-chung County's Chinchuankang air base, the largest in Southeast Asia.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"The base sits at a distance of 126 miles [203km] and 163 miles [262km] away from the two nearest air bases across the Taiwan Strait in China. Chinese fighter planes can reach Taiwan within 10 minutes if they are not intercepted from our side," said Major Lin Kuo-yu (林國裕), a pilot with the wing.
Over the past few weeks, several reports have quoted the 17-minute figure, which originated in a research report written by a group of academics that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) used as the basis for its assessment of Chinese military power.
"The IDF is the only fighter in the air force that is capable of scrambling within five minutes," Lin said.
"If they are airborne within five minutes, our IDFs should be able to intercept Chinese fighter planes before they reach the middle line of the Taiwan Strait," another pilot said, referring to the unofficial border that runs along the Taiwan Strait equidistant between the two countries.
The 427th wing yesterday showed off to the press the five-minute emergency take-off of the IDF, a procedure that must be completed without any margin for error.
Two single-seat IDFs demonstrated the whole procedure, starting from receiving orders to leaving the ground.
The Chinchuankang-based 427th wing is one of only two IDF wings of the air force. The other is the Tainan-based 443rd wing.
The IDF is one of the second-generation fighter planes of the air force which went into service in 1990s.
Other second-generation fighters include the US-made F-16 A/B and French-built Mirage 2000-5.
The IDF has the highest combat readiness ratio and lowest crash rate among the second-generation fighters, even though two of the two-seat versions of the plane crashed last year during training missions.
To the relief of the Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation, which developed the IDF, investigations by the air force showed that the two crashes were the result of human error more than any other factors.
One of the two senior pilots who were instructing trainees when the fighters crashed has been grounded.
The IDF's current role is interception using beyond-visual-range weapons such as the locally-developed Tien ChienII medium-range air-to-air missile. The Tien ChienII is claimed by many air force officials to be equivalent to the US-made AIM-120 missile.
In the future, the IDF will be armed with several other locally-developed weapons, such as a missile capable of destroying airport runways.
Beijing could eventually see a full amphibious invasion of Taiwan as the only "prudent" way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in a newly released annual report to Congress. The Pentagon's "Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025," was in many ways similar to last year’s report but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan. Generally, according to the report, Chinese leaders view the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to successfully seize
Taiwan is getting a day off on Christmas for the first time in 25 years. The change comes after opposition parties passed a law earlier this year to add or restore five public holidays, including Constitution Day, which falls on today, Dec. 25. The day marks the 1947 adoption of the constitution of the Republic of China, as the government in Taipei is formally known. Back then the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governed China from Nanjing. When the KMT, now an opposition party in Taiwan, passed the legislation on holidays, it said that they would help “commemorate the history of national development.” That
Taiwan has overtaken South Korea this year in per capita income for the first time in 23 years, IMF data showed. Per capita income is a nation’s GDP divided by the total population, used to compare average wealth levels across countries. Taiwan also beat Japan this year on per capita income, after surpassing it for the first time last year, US magazine Newsweek reported yesterday. Across Asia, Taiwan ranked fourth for per capita income at US$37,827 this year due to sustained economic growth, the report said. In the top three spots were Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong, it said. South
Snow fell on Yushan (Jade Mountain, 玉山) yesterday morning as a continental cold air mass sent temperatures below freezing on Taiwan’s tallest peak, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Snowflakes were seen on Yushan’s north peak from 6:28am to 6:38am, but they did not fully cover the ground and no accumulation was recorded, the CWA said. As of 7:42am, the lowest temperature recorded across Taiwan was minus-5.5°C at Yushan’s Fengkou observatory and minus-4.7°C at the Yushan observatory, CWA data showed. On Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County, a low of 1.3°C was recorded at 6:39pm, when ice pellets fell at Songsyue Lodge (松雪樓), a
RSS