A wide range of military equipment, weapons and vehicles — including indigenous Clouded Leopard armored vehicles, as well US-made F-16V jets and two Perry-class guided missile frigates — are to take part in the live-fire part of this year’s Han Kuang military exercises, a Ministry of National Defense official said on condition of anonymity.
The exercises, the nation’s biggest annual military drill, are divided into two parts: computer-simulated war games, which were held from April 22 to 26, and nationwide live-fire drills, which are to be staged from Monday to Friday next week.
The live-fire drills bring together the army, navy and air force to test their ability to launch a coordinated response to simulated air and sea assaults by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
The first F-16V jet modified by Aerospace Industrial Development Corp is to participate in an exercise in Changhua County’s Huatan Township (花壇) on Tuesday next week.
The exercise is to involve emergency landing and takeoff drills on the Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1).
The Clouded Leopard eight-wheeled armored vehicle, equipped with Orbital ATK 30mm Mk44 Bushmaster II cannons, and the two frigates — the Ming Chuan and the Feng Chia, which were commissioned in Kaohsiung in November last year — are to join the drills.
Tuesday’s drills as well as Thursday’s exercises on a Pingtung County firing range are to be covered by the media.
The navy yesterday launched training exercises in the East China Sea, which are to run through today.
The training covers port security, emergency procedures and air control operations, as well as joint warfare training with the army that includes anti-aircraft and anti-submarine drills.
The air force is spending NT$129.6 billion (US$4.13 billion) to convert 144 F-16A/B jets into the F-16V variant under the Phoenix Rising project.
The amount allocated from this year’s budget is about NT$9.17 billion, with the project slated to be completed by 2023.
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