After the crashes of an F-5E jet, which took off from Taitung Air Base in October last year, and an F-16, from Hualien Air Base in November last year, two F-5E jets from Taitung Air Base collided in midair last month, a tragedy that filled every Taiwanese with sorrow and regret.
It might be difficult for Taiwan to procure foreign military aircraft, but the lives of our brave pilots are priceless.
In addition to temporarily grounding F-5s for two weeks for a checkup, the air force should upgrade its training equipment and review its safety protocols to avoid further crashes.
The air force should better use flight simulator training and upgrade its ground-based training facilities.
Only after going through flight simulator training — such as virtual night flight missions and spatial disorientation scenarios, as well as using computers for flight stability — and passing a test should pilots be allowed to perform actual night flight missions.
The air force has purchased flight simulators from Lockheed Martin, the US maker of F-16s, and the National Chung-shan Institute of Science and Technology, but the companies are not specialized flight simulator developers, unlike Canadian Aviation Electronics or the Thales Group. As a result, there is still a gap between flight simulator training and real-life situations.
In addition, the US-based Defense News last month reported that the Airborne Tactical Augmented Reality System jointly developed by Red Six Aerospace and the US Air Force is nearing completion. While wearing a modified Gentex HGU-55 helmet equipped with the advanced augmented reality system, pilots in real jets can see virtual images of other aircraft.
The system even allows pilots to engage in various live exercises with ally or enemy planes, helping them to complete various training exercises, such as formation flying, midair refueling and dogfights, as well as air-to-land attacks and bombings.
In other words, this system is the best choice for future training.
The air force can also learn from civil airline companies by adopting the flight operations risk assessment system. The system integrates weather data, and pilot and airport information to assess and identify risk attributes before a flight.
It can be used to brief military pilots with a risk assessment analysis before training sessions. The system can enable pilots to have a precise grasp of weather conditions, and remind them of risks and potential response measures. This would ensure safer flight training.
Air crash records show that there is much room for improvement in terms of the air force’s safety management and training equipment. Before the country’s new advanced jet trainer, the “Yung Yin” (勇鷹) or “Brave Eagle,” replaces the F-5, the air force should seriously consider what it could do to avoid another tragedy.
The military’s training mission statement says that “a military exercise must be treated the same as actual war.”
Casualties are unavoidable when war breaks out, but safety should always be more important than training during a military exercise. Despite the importance of flight training, the nation can only maintain its military strength and pilots’ precious lives if it puts safety first.
Regardless of political stance, the public should support military reform and the necessary procurement of training equipment to enhance the country’s military strength.
Anderson Fu is a senior traffic manager at an airline.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and