The Ministry of National Defense and the US Seventh Fleet yesterday confirmed that the USS Mustin sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday, while a Twitter page that frequently shares military movements said that a US Army Bombardier Challenger 650 passed through Taiwan’s eastern airspace.
On Saturday last week, the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and Japan’s JS Suzutsuki conducted joint drills in the East China Sea.
The Mustin sailed through the Strait from north to south and continued southward, the ministry said, while showing an image released by the US of the warship during its passage.
Photo: Screen grab from Facebook
The US warship performed a general navigation mission through the Strait and Taiwan’s military, using joint intelligence and surveillance, monitored movements in nearby waters and airspace, it said.
The USS Ronald Reagan strike group on Friday last week entered the South China Sea, and on Saturday neared waters east of the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙島).
The next day, a US Air Force B-1B bomber took off from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam and at one point approached China’s air defense identification zone over the East China Sea.
The US Seventh Fleet said in a news release that the Mustin of the Yokosuka, Japan-based Destroyer Squadron 15 accompanied the Ronald Reagan strike group to the South China Sea for exercises and on Saturday continued to the East China Sea for drills with the Suzutsuki.
Against the backdrop of US-China military competition, drills by US warships in the western Pacific and South China Sea, and passage through the Taiwan Strait show Washington’s support and commitment to Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and other friendly nations in the Indo-Pacific region, Defence International magazine senior editor Smith Chen (陳國銘) said.
However, even if the US military sailed Aegis-equipped destroyers down the Strait to show its commitment, Taiwan’s national defense must still rely on its own strength, Chen added.
The number of times that military aircraft from China’s People’s Liberation Army have entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone has also increased, Chen said.
The Chinese-language Apple Daily yesterday reported that the “Callsign: CANUK78” Twitter account said that a US Army Bombardier Challenger 650 took off from Japan’s Kadena Air Base and passed through Taiwan’s eastern airspace, before turning back over the Bashi Channel and returning to Kadena.
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
Weather conditions across Taiwan are expected to remain stable today, but cloudy to rainy skies are expected from tomorrow onward due to increasing moisture in the atmosphere, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). Daytime highs today are expected to hit 25-27°C in western Taiwan and 22-24°C in the eastern counties of Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung, data on the CWA website indicated. After sunset, temperatures could drop to 16-17°C in most parts of Taiwan. For tomorrow, precipitation is likely in northern Taiwan as a cloud system moves in from China. Daytime temperatures are expected to hover around 25°C, the CWA said. Starting Monday, areas
Taiwan has recorded its first fatal case of Coxsackie B5 enterovirus in 10 years after a one-year-old boy from southern Taiwan died from complications early last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. CDC spokesman Lo Yi-chun (羅一鈞) told a news conference that the child initially developed a fever and respiratory symptoms before experiencing seizures and loss of consciousness. The boy was diagnosed with acute encephalitis and admitted to intensive care, but his condition deteriorated rapidly, and he passed away on the sixth day of illness, Lo said. This also marks Taiwan’s third enterovirus-related death this year and the first severe
A Taiwanese software developer has created a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model to help people use AI without exposing sensitive data, project head Huang Chung-hsiao (黃崇校) said yesterday. Huang, a 55-year-old coder leading a US-based team, said that concerns over data privacy and security in popular generative AIs such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek motivated him to develop a personal AI assistant named “Mei.” One of the biggest security flaws with cloud-based algorithms is that users are required to hand over personal information to access the service, giving developers the opportunity to mine user data, he said. For this reason, many government agencies and
RSS