Retired air force lieutenant general Chang Yan-ting (張延廷) urged the military to increase flight patrols and improve its intelligence-gathering capabilities, as well as unit response times, to match mounting Chinese military activity.
Over the past four years, China has increased the frequency of its military flights near Taiwan, which Chang said was a bid by Beijing to gain air superiority around Taiwan in case of renewed conflict across the Taiwan Strait.
While news of Chinese warplanes circumnavigating Taiwan is common, responses on the part of Taiwan’s military seem rarer, with fighter planes scrambling to intercept Chinese jets after they are close to the nation’s air defense identification zone, Chang said.
Photo: Military News Agency
Since October 2016, Beijing has increased its deployment of naval ships and military aircraft to the periphery of Taiwan, with Chinese jets having crossed the median line of the Strait.
In particular, two Xian H-6 jet bombers armed with air-to-ground missiles were on June 28 spotted 300km off the eastern coast of Taiwan — it was just one of about 10 similar incidents logged in the past year.
“We must be more active and scramble our jets the moment we detect Chinese jets so that they gain a more strategic position from which to handle the incoming fighter jets,” Chang said.
Minute adjustments to the patrol schedules should not affect the air force too much, whose fighter jets run 10,000 training flights per month, he added.
Taiwan’s national defense capabilities are at their lowest point, as a sizeable portion of the nation’s existing fleet of F-16 jets are being upgraded, while newly purchased aircraft have yet to arrive and the indigenous submarine program’s first series of vessels is four years off, Chang said.
However, China has been continuously upgrading and modernizing its military for the past two decades, he added.
New military hardware must be acquired, but the armed forces must also boost the public’s confidence in the military, Chang said.
The military should be truthful about the threat facing the nation, instead of simply claiming that the Chinese Communist Party is the enemy and might invade Taiwan.
The Ministry of National Defense said that its early warning systems are fully aware of Chinese military activity around Taiwan, adding that its reactions are based on the principles of not provoking, not backing down, not escalating incidents and not causing an incident that could become a regional flashpoint.
The military, which ensures that all units are combat-ready, safeguards the nation’s sovereignty and keeps its citizens safe, the ministry added.
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