A Kidd-class destroyer opened its doors to the media on Wednesday, offering visitors a display of its might during a live-fire exercise at sea.
The flagship Tsoying was accompanied by the Perry-class frigate Tzuyi and the Knox-class frigate Fengyang during the exercise in Tsoying, Kaohsiung.
Replenishment-at-sea and anti-submarine exercises were also held that day.
PHOTO: JIMMY CHUANG, TAIPEI TIMES
"What you are witnessing are drills that we hold on a routine basis," said Vice Admiral Chiang Lung-an (姜龍安), deputy commander of the Fleet Command Headquarters.
Lieutenant Chuang Fu-ke (
Chuang is the first woman to hold that position in the Navy's history.
"I am here to demonstrate that women can do these things just as well as men," she told reporters as they boarded the Tsoying.
Last Wednesday's demonstration was the latest in a recent series of drills made accessible to the media.
"Our policy is to keep the media and the population informed about what the military has been doing," Ministry of National Defense spokesman Major General Yu Sy-tue (虞思祖) said.
During a demonstration on Aug. 27, a Seahawk S-70C helicopter landed on the Lafayette-class Kuenming frigate, which was berthed at the Tsoying base.
Officers said the drill could be extremely dangerous as unpredictable and oftentimes strong winds during the landing phase could cause the helicopter to crash into the sea.
Sailors also held exercises, putting out simulated fires and fixing a mock leaking problem on the ship.
"Unlike a fire or leak on land, problems like this must be fixed immediately or it could very well jeopardize the entire ship and put its personnel at risk," Petty Officer Chen Yu-chuan (
Later that night at the Air Force's Hsinchu base, where the nation's Mirage-2000s aircraft are based, six jets carried out a nighttime scramble take-off, again in the presence of the media.
On Aug. 28 in Miaoli, soldiers staged an exercise demonstrating how they could regain control of a town occupied by enemy troops.
Army 269th Brigade Chief Major General Ma Chien-chun (
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
RSS