A Dassault Mirage 2000 fighter jet crashed yesterday evening during a training mission over the seas north of Taiwan, the Air Force Command said.
At press time last night, a military search-and-rescue helicopter team was still looking for the pilot, Captain Ho Tzu-yu (何子雨) of the 499th Tactical Fighter Wing, the air force said.
The lost fighter, tail code 2040, took off from Hsinchu Air Base yesterday evening for a training mission, it said.
Photo: Chang Chung-i, Tapei Times
At 6:43pm, the jet was flying near Pengjia Islet, about 40 nautical miles (74km) from Keelung, when it vanished from radar and air controllers lost contact with the pilot.
Sikorsky S-70C helicopters were launched at 7:05pm to conduct search-and-rescue operations over the fighter’s last known location and the coast guard was informed of the missing plane.
Ho, 28, was inducted into the air force pilot school in 2011 and has a good military record, the air force said, adding that he has logged 419 flight hours in the Mirage 2000 out of 718 total flight hours.
The nation in 1989 reached an agreement with France to buy 60 Dassault Mirage 2000 fighters, which were delivered in 1998.
Before yesterday, four fighters had been lost in accidents, in October and December 1999, November 2001 and May 2013.
Three Mirage 2000 pilots perished in those accidents, while five survived.
In addition, a Mirage 2000 fighter tail, coded 2057, was set on fire after a suspected bird strike, but the pilot escaped alive and the aircraft was fully repaired.
The cause of the crash was unknown.
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
MARITIME SECURITY: Of the 52 vessels, 15 were rated a ‘threat’ for various reasons, including the amount of time they spent loitering near subsea cables, the CGA said Taiwan has identified 52 “suspicious” Chinese-owned ships flying flags of convenience that require close monitoring if detected near the nation, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday, as the nation seeks to protect its subsea telecoms cables. The stricter regime comes after a Cameroon-flagged vessel was briefly detained by the CGA earlier this month on suspicion of damaging an international cable northeast of Taiwan. The vessel is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company with a Chinese address given for its only listed director, the CGA said previously. Taiwan fears China could sever its communication links as part of an attempt
RSS