Ballistic plates made in Taiwan for use in military-grade bulletproof vests have met local and international standards, and passed tests showing their effectiveness, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday.
The ministry made the statement at a news conference after a video on YouTube said that bulletproof vests used by Taiwan’s military were ineffective.
Major General Pan Huan-ya (潘煥亞) of the Armaments Bureau’s 205th Arsenal said that ballistic plates produced by his arsenal have repeatedly passed required tests in Taiwan and the US.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
In 2016 the plates were sent to Riverside, Maryland-based Chesapeake Testing, which specializes in testing ballistic and armor protection systems, and passed Level III body armor compliance testing, which is administered by the US Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Pan said.
The military also conducted four rounds of tests locally on Nov. 15 and Nov. 30 last year, and on Feb. 7 and June 27, which also showed the domestically made ballistic plates meet NIJ Level III ballistic capabilities in accordance with NIJ Standard 0101.04, he said.
Pan said that tests shown in videos released by YouTuber Uncle Sam Gun & Fun (山姆小叔 Gun & Fun) on Friday revealed that the YouTuber did not understand NIJ body armor compliance testing standards.
NIJ Level III testing is conducted with regular 7.62mm NATO full-metal jacket bullets, but the YouTuber used 5.56mm armor-piercing bullets, Pan said.
The NIJ standard also stipulates that body armor compliance testing be done on ballistic plates with inserts, but the YouTuber either failed to use inserts or put them in the wrong place, he said, without elaborating on the nature of the insert or its proper use.
The US-based Taiwanese YouTuber said that the ballistic plate was provided by New Taipei City Councilor Lin Ping-yu (林秉宥), a member of the Democratic Progressive Party.
The camera operator and narrator in the videos said that the guns and bullets used to test the body armor were not those used by the Chinese army, but were similar.
Lin has refused to say where he found the plate purported to be made by the 205th Arsenal.
He said his main goal was to show that Taiwanese soldiers need better protection from Chinese bullets.
The ministry said that if the ballistic plate used in the videos was found to be a controlled product of Taiwan’s armed forces, it would hold whoever was responsible for the item being given to a member of the public legally responsible.
The coast guard on Friday took a Chinese fishing boat and the 17 people on board into custody, after it rammed into a patrol boat while attempting to flee. A 100-tonne coast guard vessel at about 8am discovered a Chinese fishing boat illegally operating in waters about 11 nautical miles (20.4km) northwest of Hsinchu, the Hsinchu offshore flotilla of the Coast Guard Administration said. The crew refused to allow law enforcement to board the ship and attempted to flee, it added. The coast guard vessel and another ship chased the fishing boat for about a half hour, during which time the Chinese boat
Vice President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that Beijing was trying to “annex” Taiwan, while China said its recent series of drills near Taiwan are aimed at combating the “arrogance” of separatist forces. The Ministry of National Defense earlier this month said that it had observed dozens of Chinese fighters, drones, bombers and other aircraft, as well as warships and the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong, operating nearby. The increased frequency of China’s military activities has raised the risk of events “getting out of hand” and sparking an accidental clash, Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) said last week. Asked about the spurt
China’s Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong has asked foreign consulates in Hong Kong to submit details of their local staff, which is more proof that the “one country, two systems” model no longer exists, a Taiwanese academic said. The office sent letters dated Monday last week to consulates in the territory, giving them one month to submit the information it requires. The move followed Beijing’s attempt to obtain floor plans for all properties used by foreign missions in Hong Kong last year, which raised concerns among diplomats that the information could be used for
‘ABNORMITY’: News of the military exercises on the coast of the Chinese province facing Taiwan were made public by the Ministry of National Defense on Thursday Taiwan’s military yesterday said it has detected the Chinese military initiating a round of exercises at a bay area in coastal Fujian Province, which faces Taiwan, since early yesterday morning and it has been closely monitoring the drills. The exercises being conducted at Fujian’s Dacheng Bay featured an undisclosed number of People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) warplanes, warships and ground troops, the Ministry of National Defense said in a press statement. The ministry did not disclose what kind of military exercises are being conducted there and for how long they would be happening, but it did say that it has been closely watching
RSS