While attending a committee meeting at the Legislative Yuan on Sept. 30, Minister of National Defense Yen De-fa (嚴德發) reported that since the beginning of the year, aircraft deployed by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force have entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone 217 times.
During the same period, the air force conducted 2,972 sorties to monitor and intercept Chinese warplanes, which cost NT$25.5 billion (US$880.52 million). Yen confirmed that additional funds must be allocated to the air force’s budget for the next fiscal year to compensate for the extra flying time.
Even as the nation’s finances are precarious due to economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost of additional interception sorties is likely to soar to NT$30 billion. Also, front-line military personnel are becoming fatigued at a greater rate, creating a never-ending logistical nightmare.
Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil, who last month headed a delegation to Taiwan, said before leaving the nation that he hoped for more exchanges between Taiwan and the Czech Republic.
Maintaining considerable cooperation on economics and trade would enable the two nations to continue to deepen their relations. A good place to start would be the Czech Republic’s aeronautical supply chain.
The Czech Republic is a member of the European Aerospace Cluster Partnership and Czech plane maker Aero Vodochody produces the Aero L-39 Albatros jet trainer. About 2,800 L-39s have thus far been deployed by more than 30 air forces around the world.
The company also produces an updated design, the Aero L-159 ALCA, a light attack aircraft and advanced jet trainer. The L-159 has the same Honeywell/ITEC F124 turbofan engine as Taiwan’s Indigenous Defense Fighter (IDF), except that the L-159 has a single engine. However, this reduces its overall cost, so that it is an absolute bargain compared with the IDF.
Introduced in 2000, the L-159 has been deployed by the Czech Air Force and purchased by Spain and Iraq. Venezuela and Bolivia had placed orders, but the US objected and the sales were aborted.
Taiwan has over several decades been developing the nation’s aeronautical industry, but local firms only perform subcontract work for large European and US companies. Cooperation with Czech aviation companies would be a winning strategy for both sides.
Aerospace Industrial Development Corp has begun testing its T-5 Brave Eagle advanced jet trainer. Relatively few of the T-5s would replace the air force’s Northrop F-5E/F Tiger II fleet of trainer aircraft, so it would not conflict with Czech designs.
As the T-5 is in research and development, with a while before mass production, a quicker option would be to bring in a mature, existing model. Doing so would be a “win-win” for foreign diplomacy and national defense.
The Czech government in 2015 approved the sale of 15 L-159 fighters to Iraq for US$30 million, or US$2 million per airplane. Rather than use the F-16 or Mirage 2000, which are US$40 million to US$50 million per plane, it would cost less to buy training and attack jet fighters that are less than one-10th of the cost and deploy those to intercept Chinese warplanes that approach Taiwanese airspace.
Affordable airplanes — with savings going to staff and operational costs — is a good way to reduce overall government spending and enhance diplomatic ties.
Chang Feng-lin is a university lecturer.
Translated by Edward Jones and Perry Svensson
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
RSS