The air force has grounded all its F-5 jets as it awaits an investigation into a recent plane crash in northeastern Taiwan, an air force commander said yesterday.
A twin-seater F-5F, along with an RF-5E reconnaissance plane, crashed into the mountains near Dongao (東澳) in Yilan County late on Tuesday. Body parts from the three pilots aboard the aircraft were discovered early yesterday.
The military is still investigating the cause of the accident, and all F-5 fighters had been grounded as a safety precaution, said Huang Jong-chyi (黃仲奇), a commander with the air force’s maintenance command.
Taiwan started deploying the US-built F-5F jets in 1974, but the aircraft were later relegated to training and intelligence gathering missions after the air force acquired new fighter jets, such as F-16s and Mirage 2000-5s, in the 1990s.
According to military sources, F-5Fs perform well in low-altitude dogfights.
The planes were often used to simulate enemy aircraft in training drills, but they are now mostly used on training missions.
At its height, Taiwan had a fleet of 66 F-5Fs, but aside from depletion through accidents, others have been taken out of service, leaving 32 currently in service.
Because of the planes’ advanced age, the military has been working to maintain its available F-5 fighters. Their current availability rate is 58 percent, 3 percentage points more than the ministerial standard, Huang said.
It was the sixth flight mishap involving an F-5F fighter in seven years, according to military figures. Seven pilots have been killed in those accidents.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods