The army’s Aviation and Special Forces Command conducted training yesterday in which all orders were delivered in English.
The training — held in Hsinchu County’s Kengzihkou (坑子口) area — featured simulations of troops ambushing enemy soldiers, including vehicles passing through the ambush zone.
The training was part of the special battalion’s “tactical mission march,” which runs from Tuesday last week until Friday next week.
Photo: CNA
Its aim is to improve combat readiness and strengthen the battalion’s capabilities, the military said.
Yesterday was the 10th day of the 456km march across New Taipei City, Taoyuan, and Hsinchu and Miaoli counties.
After yesterday’s leg, 234km were completed, the military said.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA-EFE
Asked whether the use of military terms in English was linked to Taiwanese troops being trained by US military experts, command spokesman Major General Wang Chun-chieh (王俊傑) said there was no special meaning to the use of English during the training.
English allowed for easier and quicker communication during the training, Wang said.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in an interview with CNN in October last year said that a small number of US armed forces personnel were in Taiwan to train Taiwanese troops, confirming media reports about the training mission.
The US Department of State yesterday criticized Beijing over its misrepresentation of the US’ “one China” policy in the latest diplomatic salvo between the two countries over a bid by Taiwan to regain its observer status at the World Health Assembly, the decisionmaking body of the WHO. “The PRC [People’s Republic of China] continues to publicly misrepresent U.S. policy,” Department of State spokesman Ned Price wrote on Twitter. “The United States does not subscribe to the PRC’s ‘one China principle’ — we remain committed to our longstanding, bipartisan one China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, Three Joint Communiques, and
FATES LINKED: The US president said that sanctions on Russia over Ukraine must exact a ‘long-term price,’ because otherwise ‘what signal does that send to China?’ US President Joe Biden yesterday vowed that US forces would defend Taiwan militarily in the event of a Chinese attack in his strongest statement to date on the issue. Beijing is already “flirting with danger,” Biden said following talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, in which the pair agreed to monitor Chinese naval activity and joint Chinese-Russian exercises. Asked if Washington was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, he replied: “Yes.” “That’s the commitment we made,” Biden said. “We agreed with the ‘one China’ policy, we signed on to it ... but the idea that it can be
SUBTLE? While Biden said the US policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan had not changed, the group targeted China and Russia without naming them Leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US yesterday warned against attempts to “change the status quo by force,” as concerns grow about whether China could invade Taiwan. The issue of Taiwan loomed over a leadership meeting in Tokyo of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) nations — the US, Japan, Australia and India — who stressed their determination to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific region in the face of an increasingly assertive China, although Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the group was not targeting any one country. The four leaders said in a joint statement issued after their talks
Nearly half of Taiwanese believe President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has not done enough to prepare the nation against Chinese aggression, the a poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation showed. Asked whether the Tsai administration’s military and non-military preparations to defend Taiwan are adequate, 30.6 percent said they were “mostly inadequate” and 18.9 percent said they “very inadequate,” while 25.7 percent said they were “mostly adequate” and 7.1 percent said they were “very adequate.” Another 17.6 percent had no opinion or did not know enough to form a judgement. Still, 51 percent of respondents approved of Tsai’s national defense policy,
RSS