The military yesterday denied a media report that said locally produced unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), part of a development program named Long March (長征), failed to meet combat requirements and that the military had decided to suspend the program.
The Chinese-language United Evening News reported that the military-run Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology this year completed a prototype of a Long March UAV, but because the air force required greater combat capabilities than the prototype delivered, the program was suspended.
The report said that the Long March UAV program was launched in 2009 with a budget of NT$3 billion (US$100 million), but the air force required a vehicle with a combat radius large enough to enable it to conduct surveillance operations around Chinese military airports along the coasts of Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces and the prototype could not match those requirements.
The report quoted Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) as saying that the military wasted NT$3 billion on a system that could not be produced.
Lin was quoted as asking why the air force made the requirement for the UAV, since the military’s US-established early-warning radar system was able to monitor movement along the Chinese coast.
In response, the military said there were breakthroughs in some key technologies, which would be helpful for the development of weapons programs.
No money was wasted on military technology research, it added.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
RSS