A pre-Lunar New Year holiday military exercise was held in Taichung yesterday to simulate a landing by Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) amphibious units, with the nation’s first female attack-helicopter pilot participating in the drill.
The exercise simulated a PLA naval formation of destroyers, amphibious vessels and escort ships conducting a training drill in the Taiwan Strait, but abruptly crossing the median line between Taiwan and China, with ship-borne helicopters launching an attack to seize key military infrastructure in Taiwan.
The exercise came a week after China’s first and only aircraft carrier sailed through the Taiwan Strait.
Photo: CNA
The exercise saw coordinated operations by the army’s tank battalions and aviation units, while the 10th Army Command dispatched M109 howitzers, M60A3 main battle tanks, CM33 Clouded Leopard armored vehicles, AH-1W Super Cobras and UH-60M Black Hawks to repel the mock enemy units and retake occupied facilities.
The Clouded Leopards displayed their ability to mount steep slopes, with M60A3 tanks rumbling over a car used as an enemy barricade.
Special forces troops were dropped from helicopters to engage the mock enemy, while paratroopers performed precision jumps to land at designated locations.
First Lieutenant Chen Pin-fen (陳品棻), the nation’s first female attack-helicopter pilot, was controlling an AH-1W Super Cobra during the exercise.
Chen, a graduate of Virginia Military Institute in the US, completed her flight training at the end of last year and was assigned to the Republic of China Army’s Aviation and Special Forces Command.
Compared with general helicopters, which are used in search and rescue missions and transportation, attack helicopters are difficult to manage and have complex weapons systems, she said, adding that she had spent a considerable amount of time mastering the machine.
“My dream was to become an attack-helicopter pilot. It is a unique challenge. I like challenges and coping with them,” she said.
Chen was trained as a pilot at the Republic of China Military Academy and was selected to study in the US, where she broke records in swimming and graduated with distinction.
Her decision to train as a combat helicopter pilot was motivated by US soldiers’ aspirations to fight on the front lines, she said.
Women rarely choose to fly the AH-1W SuperCobra because it involves intense physicality to control the aircraft in an emergency situation when the hydraulic system fails, but she mastered the skill, Chen said.
Chen said her next goal is to pilot Apache helicopters, one of the nation’s most advanced combat aircraft.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS