Controversy continues over the search-and-rescue Black Hawk helicopters scheduled to enter service next month, reflecting broader divisions over Taiwan’s procurement of arms from the US.
Fifteen of the 60 UH-60M Black Hawks ordered from the US in 2010 are scheduled to be “lent” to the Ministry of the Interior’s National Airborne Service Corps (NASC) by the military.
Speaking at a Taichung airbase exhibit showcasing the first three helicopters to arrive from the US, Minister of the Interior Chen Wei-zen (陳威仁) praised the aircraft for having the power to push the nation’s search-and-rescue boundaries to the peaks of its highest mountains and to the farthest reaches of its territorial waters.
“Jade Mountain [玉山] is more than 3,900m high, but we will be able to fly up to 5,000m,” he said, referring to the nation’s highest mountain. “Our rescue diameter will encompass all of our territorial air space, providing protection to the outlying islands and fishing boats within our waters.”
He said that the Black Hawks’ powerful engines would also enable them to carry four times the number of passengers as the air force’s AS-365 Dauphins, while advanced night vision equipment would enable the new helicopters to conduct sea operations day and night.
The Black Hawks’ shaft horsepower of 4,000 is more than double that of the Dauphins, which were previously the most technically advanced wing of the NASC fleet.
Chen brushed off questions over the corps’ ability to maintain the new helicopters, saying that the ministry would maintain internal capacity while contracting out most maintenance work.
“Any piece of equipment will eventually have malfunctions, but these can be minimized if we have a complete system in place,” he said.
That Chen being questioned on helicopter maintenance reflects the controversial nature of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) purchase of US military helicopters, which also included 30 AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters.
The combined Black Hawk and Apache helicopter purchase has cost more than any other arms purchase during Ma’s administration, with the US$5.6 billion price tag for the helicopters and their missiles surpassing the refitting costs for the nation’s fleet of F-16 jets.
That hefty price tag has sparked criticism domestically, with high operation and maintenance costs brought into the spotlight in October last year when the majority of the nation’s Apache fleet was grounded because of corrosion. The grounding was the second in the fleet’s short history and followed a 2014 crash.
Critics have also said that search-and-rescue operations are a wasteful use of Black Hawk helicopters, which were reallocated to the NASC following a crash of one of the force’s Vietnam War-era UH-1H Iroquois helicopters during Typhoon Morakot rescue operations in 2009.
That crash, combined with broad public criticism of the Ma administration’s disaster response, eventually led to the plans to replace NASC’s Iroquois and other aging helicopters with Black Hawks “borrowed” from the military.
Former minister of the interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) criticized the decision in a recent interview, saying that because Black Hawk helicopters are cutting-edge pieces of military equipment, dedicating them to search-and-rescue operations was like using an expensive sports car as a taxi.
“If you buy a Ferrari, you can use it as a taxi, but what is the point?” he said. “No one will doubt the value of a Ferrari, but you have to look at the whole package: maintenance, spare parts and training are all problems.”
He singled out the Black Hawks’ complicated digital instruments as being particularly difficult to maintain given that Taiwan is at the “bottom of the food chain” when it comes to acquiring spare parts from the US.
“The Black Hawk is a sophisticated piece of military equipment, and the US prioritizes sales of military equipment,” he said. “US military forces come first, followed by the US coast guard and reserves, and only then the various US allies. Taiwan trails other US allies, and domestically, the Ministry of the Interior comes after the Ministry of National Defense — so we are really at the bottom of the food chain. Unless you have an excellent maintenance plan, acquiring spare parts will almost certainly be a problem in the future.”
He said that during his tenure, the NASC was already having trouble servicing its decade-old Dauphins, which are civilian helicopters.
While it was already “too late” to reverse the administration’s decision because of sunk training costs, a better decision at the time would have been to transfer the army’s fleet of S-70 “Seagulls” — an earlier search-and-rescue Black Hawk variant — to the NASC, he said.
While the Seagulls, which were acquired in the 1980s, lack the sophisticated digital equipment of Black Hawk helicopters, their operation, integration and maintenance would have been much simpler than the new models, while still representing a huge step up from the NASC’s Vietnam war-era helicopters, he said, adding that consolidating NASC and the defense ministry search-and-rescue teams would reduce redundancy and cut costs.
Following the example of many Southeast Asian nations that outsource search-and-rescue operations to private companies would be even more efficient, he said, adding that estimates provided to him while in office put the cost of outsourcing at about half that of maintaining a fleet.
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
The lowest temperature in a low-lying area recorded early yesterday morning was in Miaoli County’s Gongguan Township (公館), at 6.8°C, due to a strong cold air mass and the effect of radiative cooling, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. In other areas, Chiayi’s East District (東區) recorded a low of 8.2°C and Yunlin County’s Huwei Township (虎尾) recorded 8.5°C, CWA data showed. The cold air mass was at its strongest from Saturday night to the early hours of yesterday. It brought temperatures down to 9°C to 11°C in areas across the nation and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties,
STAY VIGILANT: When experiencing symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, such as dizziness or fatigue, near a water heater, open windows and doors to ventilate the area Rooftop flue water heaters should only be installed outdoors or in properly ventilated areas to prevent toxic gas from building up, the Yilan County Fire Department said, after a man in Taipei died of carbon monoxide poisoning on Monday last week. The 39-year-old man, surnamed Chen (陳), an assistant professor at Providence University in Taichung, was at his Taipei home for the holidays when the incident occurred, news reports said. He was taking a shower in the bathroom of a rooftop addition when carbon monoxide — a poisonous byproduct of combustion — leaked from a water heater installed in a poorly ventilated
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