A Taiwanese-made Indigenous Defense Fighter (IDF) jet went missing near Penghu (澎湖) yesterday morning, the Air Force said yesterday.
Chang Chao-kuei (張朝魁), the political warfare chief of the Air Force’s 427 Wing, told a press conference that the missing warplane took off from the Cingcyuan Gang (清泉崗) air force base at 9:15am and flew toward Penghu as part of a routine training drill.
The IDF conducted a live-fire missile training exercise at a reef area near Penghu, but then disappeared from radar screens near Huayu Island at 9:45am, the official said.
PHOTO: CHAN CHAO-YANG, TAIPEI TIMES
Chang said military search and rescue squads found pilots’ seats, a lifejacket and a helmet from the jet floating in the sea in the area at 1:49pm, indicating that the two pilots had ejected from the aircraft.
Chang said that pilot Captain Ku Chih-pin (古智賓), 29, and co-pilot Captain Chen Chien-ting (陳建廷), 31, were missing, along with the aircraft.
The Air Force immediately dispatched two S-70C helicopters to search for the missing jet, Chang said.
Coast guard units also sent five patrol ships to join the search.
Chang said another two IDF jets that were participating in the drill were recalled following the incident.
The weather conditions in Penghu were good, Chang said.
The Air Force Command said the military would spare no effort in searching for the plane and its pilots, and that a special task force has been formed to investigate the matter.
Chang said Ku and Chen are both married. While Ku had a total of 1,065 hours of flight time, Chen had only 22 hours.
Taiwan began to develop the IDF in 1980, when the US was unwilling to provide it with F-16s.
Taiwan built 130 IDFs with the help of defense firm General Dynamics, which manufactures the F-16.
As the IDFs were designed more than 20 years ago, the Aerospace Industry Development Corp (AIDC) has proposed a NT$7 billion (US$230 million) project to upgrade the aircraft, but the Cabinet has not approved the program.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS