New voluntary military recruits are to undergo more intense and longer training from next year to boost their combat preparedness, the Ministry of National Defense announced yesterday.
Major General Liu Shen-mo (劉慎謨), director of the Office of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Training’s Military Training Division, told reporters that the system as it is has new voluntary military recruits undergoing 230 hours of training over five weeks.
However, from Jan. 1, boot camp is to be extended to eight weeks with the total training hours increased to 380, Liu said.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of National Defense
Aside from what is taught in the existing program such as combat skills and weapons use, the new program is to include health management, pressure resistance, sports science, survival skills and casualty care, among others, he said.
The new recruits would also spend more time on marksmanship, he said.
Currently, recruits need to fire 86 rounds in a prone position, but from next month they would need to fire 160 rounds while standing, prone and kneeling, with nighttime firing added, Liu said.
After completing the eight-week course, the recruits would be assigned to military units for further training as they begin their service, he added.
However, the change would not affect compulsory military training, with conscripts to undergo a five-week boot camp before being assigned to field units.
The nation’s military is a mainly volunteer force, with conscripts serving supporting roles. Taiwan has about 215,000 troops.
As of last year, there were 160,000 voluntary military personnel.
The decision to change the boot camp training program was to meet “the needs of modern warfare and learn from the experience of other more advanced countries,” Liu said, without elaborating.
As for extending the duration of mandatory service to one year, ministry spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) said that the policy would have far-ranging effects and preparations are under way for its implementation.
More detailed plans would follow once they are known, Sun said.
The Act of Military Service System (兵役法) stipulates that reverting to one year of mandatory service would require one year of advance notice, meaning that if the notice is not announced this year, the planned 2024 implementation date would be postponed to 2025.
Experts yesterday urged the government to make its policy decisions known as soon as possible, as it would help ministries and the public prepare accordingly.
Institute of National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said that China’s military is becoming more advanced, while recruitment in Taiwan is facing the added challenge of a falling birthrate.
Chen Kuo-ming (陳國銘), editor of the Chinese-language Defence International magazine, said that the chances an announcement to lengthen compulsory service would be made before the end of this year are high, but it is also important to outline how training would change.
Extending service would allow conscripts more time to hone their infantry, logistics and maintenance skills, Chen said, adding that while it would be difficult for conscripts to operate armored vehicles, they would still be adequate foot soldiers in the event of an invasion.
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
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
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
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has