In an unprecedented move ordered by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Monday last week, the air force dispatched F-16 jets to escort a chartered plane carrying Taiwanese team members back from the Asian Games in Jakarta, with the jets launching flares to welcome them.
The move sparked heated discussion on the Internet over how many tax dollars were burned up by sending the fighters.
One newspaper reported that, according to data published by the Ministry of National Defense, fuel costs per hour to fly an E-2K Hawkeye early-warning plane are more than NT$270,000 (US$8,778) and NT$110,000 for an F-16.
Welcoming the Asian Games team cost more than NT$1.37 million, the newspaper said — which, to be fair, is quite economical in terms of air force expenditure.
Among the air force’s mainstay fighters are the F-16, the Indigenous Defense Fighter (IDF) and the Mirage 2000.
Legislative Yuan data show that IDF flights cost NT$250,000 per hour in fuel burn.
The hourly fuel cost for a Mirage is much higher, NT$800,000, and it costs NT$14 million per year to maintain and repair one of the France-made jets. Only about 600 Mirage 2000s have ever been built, so their exclusive spare parts are expensive.
Two decades ago, the Mirage was the most capable of the nation’s second-generation fighters. The version that France sold to Taiwan was the newest available at the time — the improved Mirage 2000-5.
The fact that the French Air Force had just been re-equipped with the same version showed that its combat capabilities were top-notch.
However, nothing and nobody can escape the ravages of time, and Taiwan’s Mirages, like its F-16s and IDFs, need to have their lives extended and their systems upgraded. However, China’s strenuous efforts to reduce Taiwan’s international space make this almost impossible.
Fighters generally need to be upgraded after 15 years of service.
Taiwan asked France to upgrade its Mirages in 2012, but France, under pressure from China, forced Taiwan to withdraw its request by demanding a sky-high price.
Until Taiwan’s other two mainstay fighters have completed mid-life upgrades, the air force will have to go on loving its Mirages for their capabilities, even if it hates their high operation and maintenance costs.
Under the Phoenix Rising Project, Taiwan’s F-16A/Bs are to be retrofitted to the F-16V standard by 2022, while the IDFs have completed their mid-life upgrade under the Hsiang Chan Project. Both jets can carry air-to-air missiles with a range of up to 100km.
However, Taiwan cannot upgrade its Mirages or buy new weapons for them, which makes their age show even more.
Taiwan’s F-16s were long ago armed with AIM-120 medium-range air-to-air missiles, whose range exceeds 105km, while IDFs carry Tien Chien II (“Sky Sword,” TC-2) missiles with a range of more than 100km, giving them beyond-visual-range engagement capabilities.
However, the MICA medium-range missiles used on Mirages have a range of just 50km, much shorter than their rivals.
The Mirages would be no match in air-to-air combat involving China’s PL-12 Pi Li (“Thunderbolt”) fighters, which have an effective range of 100km.
Considering all these problems and the resources consumed by the fleet of Mirages, the ministry should carefully consider phasing them out.
Chang Feng-lin is a senior military officer.
Translated by Julian Clegg
There has been much catastrophizing in Taiwan recently about America becoming more unreliable as a bulwark against Chinese pressure. Some of this has been sparked by debates in Washington about whether the United States should defend Taiwan in event of conflict. There also were understandable anxieties about whether President Trump would sacrifice Taiwan’s interests for a trade deal when he sat down with President Xi (習近平) in late October. On top of that, Taiwan’s opposition political leaders have sought to score political points by attacking the Lai (賴清德) administration for mishandling relations with the United States. Part of this budding anxiety
The diplomatic dispute between China and Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments in the Japanese Diet continues to escalate. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong (傅聰) wrote that, “if Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act of aggression.” There was no indication that Fu was aware of the irony implicit in the complaint. Until this point, Beijing had limited its remonstrations to diplomatic summonses and weaponization of economic levers, such as banning Japanese seafood imports, discouraging Chinese from traveling to Japan or issuing
Tokyo-Beijing relations have been rapidly deteriorating over the past two weeks as China tries to punish Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks about Taiwan earlier this month, and the off-ramp to this conflict is yet to be seen. Takaichi saying that a “Taiwan contingency” could cause a “situation threatening Japan’s survival” — which would allow Japan to act in self-defense — has drawn Beijing’s ire and sparked retaliatory measures. Her remark did not gain public attention until Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian (薛劍) made an apparent threat to behead her. The two sides lodged protests against each
On Nov. 8, newly elected Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) and Vice Chairman Chi Lin-len (季麟連) attended a memorial for White Terror era victims, during which convicted Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spies such as Wu Shi (吳石) were also honored. Cheng’s participation in the ceremony, which she said was part of her efforts to promote cross-strait reconciliation, has trapped herself and her party into the KMT’s dark past, and risks putting the party back on its old disastrous road. Wu, a lieutenant general who was the Ministry of National Defense’s deputy chief of the general staff, was recruited
RSS