A military aircraft emergency takeoff and landing drill is to take place on a regular roadway early on Wednesday next week and feature all three fighter jet models in Taiwan’s fleet, a military source said.
The drill is scheduled to begin at 6:30am on a 3km section of Provincial Highway No. 1 near Jiadong (佳冬) and Fangliao (枋寮) townships in Pingtung County, the source said on Monday.
An Indigenous Defense Fighter, an F-16V, a Mirage 2000-5 and a E-2K early warning aircraft would land on the highway in that order, they said.
The emergency landing and takeoff drill aims to test each aircraft’s ability to land on the roadway in case the airstrip at the nearby Pingtung Air Base is seriously damaged by enemy forces, the source said.
It would be the first time such a drill has been conducted on a provincial highway, which is a regular roadway connecting cities that has stoplights and intersections.
The section being used for the drill is one of five built to accommodate emergency military aircraft landings and takeoffs in the event of a war.
The other emergency landing strips are all on Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1): the Madou (麻豆) and Rende (仁德) district sections in Tainan, the Huatan Township (花壇) section in Changhua County and the Minsyong Township (民雄) section in Chiayi County.
Exercises have previously been conducted on these four sections. Drills planned for the Jiadong section in 2011 were canceled due to poor weather conditions.
The drill would form part of the postponed live-fire component of this year’s Han Kuang military exercises to be held from Monday to Friday next week.
The Han Kuang exercises have been held annually since 1984 in the form of live-fire drills and computerized war games, to test Taiwan’s combat readiness in the face of a possible Chinese invasion.
This year’s tabletop drills were held from April 23 to Monday last week, while the live-fire exercises were scheduled to start on July 12 and run for five days.
Due to a domestic COVID-19 outbreak that started in May, the armed forces in June postponed the live-fire part of the military exercises.
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