Taiwan is stepping up military cooperation with long-standing partners and forging new ties as it bolsters training exercises with the US Army Special Forces and trains officers and soldiers from an undisclosed Middle Eastern country, a high-ranking military official said yesterday.
The Republic of China Military Police Special Services Company, commonly called the Night Hawks, has standing collaborations with the US Army Special Forces, commonly known as the Green Berets, for regular joint exercises, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Taiwan and the US have increased the frequency of training and adapted course materials to meet the needs of the security situation in East Asia, the official added.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
One of the joint exercises added to the program last year involved observing Green Berets training in a simulated battle zone in Washington state, they said.
Through the training, the Night Hawk unit aimed to sharpen its knowledge of wartime military operations and boost the special operations capabilities of the Military Police Command.
The Night Hawks’ standing invitation to participate in the annual Pacific Area Special Operations Conference would expand its network, and help it look beyond Taiwan and regional concerns, the official added.
The source also said that Taiwan has reached an agreement with a Middle Eastern country to provide counterterrorism training to that nation’s officers and soldiers in Taiwan, without disclosing the country’s name.
The first group of trainees has completed their training and returned to their home country, but the second group’s arrival has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the source said.
The deal is a breakthrough for the command, they said, adding that high-ranking officers from both sides visited each nation last year.
The Ministry of National Defense is to schedule a visit to the Middle Eastern country and send a platoon of Night Hawks for training exercises once the pandemic eases, the source said.
Visits by high-ranking officers to Taiwan and the Middle Eastern country would likely be normalized in the future, the source added.
Taiwan’s special forces are respected internationally and are one of the few units in Asia that can train themselves and provide counterterrorism training to other nations, the source said.
Separately on Friday, the ministry said that a Chinese Y-8 military transport aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone while flying over waters southwest of the nation.
The intrusion occurred at about noon, the ministry said, adding that the aircraft left the area after being warned over radio by Taiwanese fighter jets.
It was the seventh time this year that Chinese military aircraft have been spotted flying near Taiwan.
Air activity over the waters surrounding Taiwan are being closely monitored by the military, the ministry said.
“At present, there is no cause for alarm,” it added.
Additional reporting by CNA
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues