President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) expressed his sorrow yesterday over Wednesday’s crash of an F-5 jet near Penghu that killed two pilots, and urged the Ministry of National Defense to investigate why such crashes have become more frequent.
“There have been four or five plane crash accidents since I took office, affecting the army, air force and navy. I hope the ministry will figure out if the accidents were caused by mechanical problems or improper operations,” Ma said.
He made the remarks while presiding over the promotion of new Air Force commander Lei Yu-chi (雷玉其) at the Presidential Office.
Ma said he had demanded the military replace old equipment and enhance its training to prevent similar accidents.
“Every pilot has gone through lengthy training, and every pilot has a family. Such losses are a great sorrow for us,” he said.
The F-5F twin-seat jet took off from Cingcyuangang (清泉崗) air base in Taichung on Wednesday morning for a live fire exercise on a reef in Penghu, but disappeared from radar screens shortly afterwards.
Air Force Command Headquarters said Taiwan has about 60 F-5s, development of which began in the 1950s. F-5s have been involved in 30 accidents, including Wednesday’s, in which 32 pilots have been killed.
Ma reiterated his determination to fight corruption in the military, and promised to look into cases while reforming the system to prevent a recurrence.
Ma asked the ministry in April to report to him every three months on its investigations into corruption allegations.
“For military men, honor is more important than their lives. What we want is for those who were treated unjustly to be able to clear their names, while treating those who were found guilty according to the law,” he said.
Ma said he would also ask the military to continue its equipment upgrades and be prepared for war despite the improvement in cross-strait relations.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift