The military has finalized a plan to extend the length of reservist training from next year in the hope of improving the combat readiness of reserve forces, a military official said yesterday.
Reservists are to undergo two weeks of training, instead of five to seven days, and they can be asked to train two years in a row rather than every other year, said Ma Chia-lung (馬家龍), deputy head of the Ministry of National Defense’s All-out Defense Mobilization Office.
The military is also to scale up reservist training by doubling the time spent on required combat training, such as rifle shooting, to maintain basic combat skills, he said.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of National Defense
For example, reservists now undergo 12 hours of rifle training, firing 86 rounds, but next year, they would be required to train for 28 hours and fire 183 rounds, Ma said.
The plan, to be implemented on a trial basis, was devised after the military last year said that it wanted to ensure that the nation’s reserve forces could reliably back up regular soldiers amid an escalation of Chinese military maneuvers near Taiwan.
Reservist training includes specialty retraining, firearms training, combat training, combined training, and disaster prevention and relief training, which are necessary for combat operations and disaster relief, the ministry said.
While the training periods for reservists would be longer and more intense under the new guidelines, they would, over time, not require much more training than is currently required.
Presently, former soldiers undergo five days of reservist training every two years, while former officers undergo seven days of training.
The training, which takes place at a military base near the reservist’s residence, aims to maintain their basic combat skills.
They are requried to report for up to four training sessions in the eight years after they are discharged from active duty.
However, under the new rules, they would only need to report for two training sessions, which could be fulfilled in consecutive years.
A trial of the new rules is to take place in the first three quarters of next year at 25 military camps, where about 15,000 reservists discharged from the military within the past eight years would be trained, Ma said.
The military would review the outcomes in the fourth quarter before fully commiting to the program, he said.
The National Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology yesterday showcased its locally developed variants of the Vision 60 robotic patrol dog, which it plans to deploy on the nation’s outlying territories in the South China Sea. The variants were produced under the Joint Lab project — created by the institute and domestic companies — and assembled with domestically produced motors, lenses and artificial intelligence (AI) systems alongside licensed tech from the US, Missile and Rocket Systems Research Division deputy director Jen Kuo-kang (任國光) told the media event at a military base in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直) area. Taiwan has built up its strengths
RIGHT DIRECTION: Taiwan’s efforts to prevent forced labor include a proposal to ‘fully prohibit’ employers from withholding workers’ documents, an official said Taiwan is to establish a mechanism to restrict imports of goods linked to forced labor, the Executive Yuan said yesterday, after the US proposed imposing additional tariffs on Taiwanese goods over labor concerns. “The Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Economic Affairs are to establish an interministerial review procedure,” Executive Yuan spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “The government is to use the Foreign Trade Act [貿易法] as the legal basis to restrict imports of goods produced with forced labor” and bring its supply chain governance more in line with international standards on human rights, resilience
NOT IMMEDIATE: Taiwan has a chance to appeal the proposed 10 percent tariff before it starts, while other countries face a 12.5 percent tariff from the trade office Taiwan is among 60 economies determined by the US to have failed to impose or enforce a ban on the importation of goods produced with forced labor, according to a notice released on Tuesday by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), which proposed imposing an additional 10 percent or more tariff on them. The USTR in a statement said that following an investigation, it had determined under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 that the failure of the 60 economies to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor is
TIT-FOR-TAT: The US allegedly revoked the visa of a Chinese national working at Xinhua News Agency in the US in response to Beijing’s expulsion of Vivian Wang The Presidential Office yesterday condemned China for expelling a New York Times correspondent from Beijing following the newspaper’s interview with President William Lai (賴清德), saying the move highlighted Beijing’s suppression of press freedom and its threat to international news media. Taiwan has noted a series of recent incidents in which Beijing used similar tactics to “threaten and pressure international media outlets and journalists,” Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said in a statement. “This concerns not only press freedom and freedom of expression, but also the safety of journalists, and Taiwan and relevant partners are paying close attention to the situation,” she
RSS