Nearly 9,000 rounds of rifle ammunition were stolen from an air base in Taoyuan County in the largest theft of military ordinance in a decade, officials at Air Force General Headquarters said yesterday.
The missing 65-K2 ammunition was likely removed by more than one person who broke into a tightly-guarded munitions depot through a back window, said officials at the Taoyuan air base. The base, located in Pateh township (八德), is used mainly as a training center for sidelined F-5E jet fighters.
The window, which had been covered with a metal grate, was opened using a hydraulic cutting instrument, air base officials said.
Air base officials said they suspected that the theft was an inside job since the depot was tightly guarded and the thieves were able to get in undetected. Theft of weapons by military personnel is punishable by death, according to military laws under which such crimes are tried.
The ammunition -- approximately 8,900 rounds in all -- was reported missing at 8am yesterday after duty guards conducted a routine check of the facility.
The ammunition, which had been stored in eight wooden cases, might have been stolen several days earlier since base personnel do not check all munitions on a daily basis, said military officials who asked not to be identified.
Major Yu Li-chen (
The theft of such a large amount of ammunition from a tightly-guarded spot shows that the depot was not sufficiently secure, Yu said.
"Usually ammunition storerooms in military units are secured with metal gratings and alarms on the windows, but there are no alarms in the depot where the theft happened," Yu said.
Someone could enter and leave the facility undetected through a window out of the guards' line of sight, he said.
The last major theft of military ordinance happened in 1991 at another base in Taoyuan County. An army major stole 1,000 rounds of M-16 ammunition and dozens of grenades to sell to gangsters. After being caught and tried, he was sentenced to death and executed shortly after conviction.
In August, four cases of munitions past their service date were stolen from an army division in Tainan. The Army's general headquarters sent a top-ranking official to take charge of the investigation, but the case has yet to be solved.
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