Pilots of F-16V, Mirage 2000 and other jets have been participating in joint training at Hualien County’s Chiashan Air Force Base to bolster the military’s ability to engage in asymmetric warfare, military officials said yesterday.
Lieutenant General Sun Lien-sheng (孫連勝), deputy commander of the Air Force Command, said at the launch of the joint training earlier this month that such exercises would be held more frequently to gain an understanding of the limitations and capabilities of different military branches, and to determine what support they need to closely work with one another during wartime.
The goal is to enable Taiwan’s relatively smaller military to deter China from invading, Sun added.
Photo: Yu Tai-lang, Taipei Times
Military officials yesterday said that the lesson from Russia’s war in Ukraine is to build an asymmetric military force to stall, destroy or paralyze the enemy.
The air force is mostly asked to support other military branches’ missions, so joint training must first start with combat precision training for the air force, and then expand to include the other two branches of the military, they said.
To improve training for second-generation aircraft, the air force in 2001 commissioned the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology to develop the Tactic Analysis System (TAS), which was merged with the existing telemetry system.
TAS was modified and refined based on actual air force operations. It includes a mission display and control system, an airborne targeting pod and relay stations.
The TAS system has been upgraded to be used with the Air Combat Training Instrumentation System (ACTIS) targeting pod for military exercises, the officials said.
Aside from F-16Vs, Mirage 2000s and Indigenous Defense Fighters, Taiwan’s AIDC T-5 Brave Eagle trainer jet has also been equipped with the ACTIS targeting pod, they said.
The Brave Eagle’s test missions now include air-to-surface bombing, the officials added.
In other developments, the Ministry of National Defense last month began expanding the number of reservists nationwide, military personnel said.
New reserve brigades have been formed in Taichung, Kaohsiung, New Taipei City and Hsinchu County, they said.
A reserve brigade now consists of nearly 200 personnel, up from 24 under the previous policy, they said, adding that brigade commanders, battalion commanders and other important staff are on active duty.
The ministry is expected to form four more reserve brigades in the second half of this year and another 10 next year, military sources said.
Chen Wen-jia (陳文甲), a senior consultant for the Institute for National Policy Research, said that having reserve brigades in 18 cities and counties would help mobilize reservists, but “regulations governing the mobilization of reservists must be flexible.”
Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said rules related to reservists are expected to be greatly improved.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
RSS