A secret military mission to Yemen by the air force is commemorated with a special exhibition at the Air Force Museum that opened on Saturday, 40 years after Taiwanese troops were deployed to help North Yemen forces.
The now declassified military aid program, which the air force conducted from 1979 until 1990, began with a request from then-diplomatic ally Saudi Arabia to aid its ally, the Yemen Arab Republic, which had no ties with Taiwan, a Ministry of National Defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
North Yemen at the time was engaged in a rivalry with the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, which it fought during a brief war in 1972.
Photo courtesy of the Republic of China Air Force Museum
The countries in 1990 formed the Republic of Yemen, but strife returned to the region in 2017.
The air force denies ever flying any combat missions over Yemen.
In what was known as the Great Desert Program (大漠計畫), the air force deployed more than 1,000 personnel — including pilots and ground crew — to assist and advise the North Yemeni air force, until Saudi Arabia withdrew its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan, ending the program, the official said.
Many participants in the program would rise to prominent military and civilian positions, including Deputy Minister of National Defense Shen Yi-ming (沈一鳴) and former Civil Aeronautics Administration director-general Billy Chang (張國政), the official said.
The exhibition features records and documents, as well as uniforms, insignia and photographs from 200 veterans who participated in the mission, the official said.
On the opening day, the Air Force Academy presented a commendation of gratitude to personnel involved in the mission on behalf of the armed forces.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
RSS