The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday reiterated its goal to build an all-volunteer military force by 2018 after Minister of National Defense Feng Shih-kuan (馮世寬) told lawmakers on Monday that conscription would end in 2018.
It is the ministry’s goal to cease drafting citizens into service by 2018, “a goal that has to be worked toward,” said Major General Fu Cheng-jung (傅政榮), director of the Human Resources Division of the ministry’s Resources Management Department.
However, Fu’s comment was more ambiguous than Feng’s, who also said that ending conscription by 2018 was “a decision that should not be changed.”
Photo: Tu Chu-min, Taipei Times
The ministry had previously been more flexible about the deadline for an all-volunteer force.
Fu said that the number of volunteer soldiers and officers has increased steadily in accordance with the ministry’s predictions.
However, he did not give a direct reply when asked whether the military would have to continue conscription should it fail to recruit the necessary number of volunteers.
“The nation’s military service system has not changed, and the draft system and the volunteer system have been developed in parallel,” he said.
The ministry in 2008 announced that it would build an all-volunteer force by 2014, but ended up having to push back its target date for ending conscription several times.
Men born after 1994 are now exempt from one-year compulsory military service, but will still be required to undergo four months of mandatory military training upon reaching conscription age.
In other defense-related news, amid concerns over Chinese military aircraft that have circled Taiwan’s air defense identification zone twice in two weeks, the ministry said the military will confront intruding Chinese military aircraft “fearlessly, without evasion or weakness.”
However, the military’s exact response would vary depending on whether the intruding aircraft appear hostile, Joint Operations Division Director Major General Chung Shu-ming (鍾樹明) said.
The military monitors China’s military maneuvers closely and was fully aware of the two training missions around Taiwan’s airspace, he said.
It opted to deal with the situation in a way that would not provoke conflict, Chung said.
In the event of a Chinese military fleet with reconnaissance capabilities circling Taiwan, the military would impose a strict control over high-tech weapons and other signal-emitting sources to prevent China from accessing sensitive data, Chung said.
As an example of that flexibility, ministry spokesman Major General Chen Chung-chi (陳中吉) said that a live-fire exercise of the Sky Bow II surface-to-air missile system in October at a base in Pingtung County was canceled after a Chinese reconnaissance ship was discovered off the southern coast.
In addition, the military has a humanitarian contingency plan to rescue the crew of Chinese military vessels should an accident occur, the ministry said.
Search and rescue missions would be deployed if Chinese vessels were involved in an accident in areas to the east of the middle line of the Taiwan Strait, Chung said.
China would be in charge of the search and rescue effort if such an accident occurred to the west of the middle line, he said.
China appears to have built mockups of a port in northeastern Taiwan and a military vessel docked there, with the aim of using them as targets to test its ballistic missiles, a retired naval officer said yesterday. Lu Li-shih (呂禮詩), a former lieutenant commander in Taiwan’s navy, wrote on Facebook that satellite images appeared to show simulated targets in a desert in China’s Xinjiang region that resemble the Suao naval base in Yilan County and a Kidd-class destroyer that usually docks there. Lu said he compared the mockup port to US naval bases in Yokosuka and Sasebo, Japan, and in Subic Bay
Police are investigating the death of a Formosan black bear discovered on Tuesday buried near an industrial road in Nantou County, with initial evidence indicating that it was shot accidentally by a hunter. The bear had been caught in wildlife traps at least five times before, three times since 2020. Codenamed No. 711, the bear received extensive media coverage last year after it was discovered trapped twice in less than two months in the Taichung mountains. After its most recent ensnarement last month, the bear was released in the Dandashan (丹大山) area in Nantou County’s Sinyi Township (信義). However, officials became concerned after the
The majority of parents surveyed in northern Taiwan favor the suspension of all on-site classes at schools from the junior-high level and below amid a surge in domestic COVID-19 infections, parent groups said yesterday. About 84.4 percent of respondents in a survey of 2,912 parents in northern Taiwan, where the outbreak is the most serious, said they supported suspending classes, the Action Alliance on Basic Education, the Taiwan Parents Protect Women and Children Association, and the Taiwan Love Children Association said. The groups distributed questionnaires to parents in New Taipei City, Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan and Hsinchu city and county from Saturday morning
DETERRENCE: US National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell said cross-strait affairs are on the agenda at the US-ASEAN Special Leaders’ Summit The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday thanked the Czech Senate for passing a resolution supporting Taiwan’s inclusion in the WHO and other international organizations for the second consecutive year. The resolution was passed on Wednesday with 51 votes in favor, one opposed and 11 abstentions. In addition to the WHO, it also called for Taiwan’s participation in the “meetings, mechanisms and activities” of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the International Civil Aviation Organization and Interpol. In its opening, the resolution states that the Czech Republic “considers Taiwan as one of its key partners in the Indo-Pacific region,” while noting its
RSS