An army special forces officer became the 13th Taiwanese soldier to receive the US Army’s Ranger tab, after he completed a grueling training program, a defense official said.
Lieutenant Hsu Ching (徐靖), assistant company commander of a unit under the Special Operations and Aviation Command, completed the Ranger School last month, a defense official told the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) on Thursday, on the condition of anonymity.
Certification for the Ranger tab is a prerequisite for US Army officers to be inducted into the elite 75 Ranger Regiment. They must also complete a separate assessment and selection program.
Photo courtesy of a reader
The Ranger School is designed to train the leadership cadre of the Rangers and other infantry units in the US Army, the official said.
Ranger School offers a steep challenge for the trainees and military officers from elite foreign units were no exception, they said, adding that only 40 percent of participants complete the course.
The training course is divided into three stages and hones infantry skills in military bases and the wildernesses of Georgia and Florida, they said.
Photo courtesy of Kuo Li-sheng
The Moore Phase is focused on fitness, tactics and combat proficiency, the Mountain Phase is for mountain warfare and high-altitude survival, and the Florida Phase emphasizes amphibious, jungle and swamp warfare, they said.
The school produces officers who are well-trained in leadership, command, tactics and weapons-handling, the official said.
Hsu graduated from Norwich University and began training in the Ranger School in October last year, they said.
A little more than 90 soldiers out of 300 participants completed the training to qualify for the tab, the official said.
Retired major general Kuo Li-sheng (郭力升), who wears the Ranger tab, said that during his training at Ranger School, they drilled trainees ceaselessly in parachuting, air assault, small unit tactics, navigation, wilderness survival and tradecraft.
During jungle training, candidates survived on one meal per day and ready-to-eat rations via air drops, leaving Guo “nearly delirious” from hunger and fatigue, he said.
Trainees had “no rank, hair or off-days” while attending Ranger School, he added.
Trainees were careful to wear their berets inside-out so the AC-130 gunships raining live rounds on targets in the training zone could see the sewn-in reflective infrared panels during night exercises, Kuo said.
A tradition among Ranger tab-qualified soldiers was to show their memorial coin to one another, and the person caught without the token must buy the other a beer, he said, adding that retired US army general Colin Powell — former US joint chiefs of staff chairman and US secretary of state — owed him a beer from a 1997 meeting.
CAUTION: Based on intelligence from the nation’s security agencies, MOFA has cautioned Taiwanese travelers about heightened safety risks in China-friendly countries The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday urged Taiwanese to be aware of their safety when traveling abroad, especially in countries that are friendly to China. China in June last year issued 22 guidelines that allow its courts to try in absentia and sentence to death so-called “diehard” Taiwanese independence activists, even though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction in Taiwan. Late last month, a senior Chinese official gave closed-door instructions to state security units to implement the guidelines in countries friendly to China, a government memo and a senior Taiwan security official said, based on information gathered by Taiwan’s intelligence agency. The
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said yesterday that it is looking to hire 8,000 people this year, at a time when the tech giant is expanding production capacity to maintain its lead over competitors. To attract talent, TSMC would launch a large-scale recruitment campaign on campuses across Taiwan, where a newly recruited engineer with a master’s degree could expect to receive an average salary of NT$2.2 million (US$60,912), which is much higher than the 2023 national average of NT$709,000 for those in the same category, according to government statistics. TSMC, which accounted for more than 60 percent
Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢), a Taiwanese businessman and deputy convener of the nation’s National Climate Change Committee, said yesterday that “electrical power is national power” and nuclear energy is “very important to Taiwan.” Tung made the remarks, suggesting that his views do not align with the country’s current official policy of phasing out nuclear energy, at a forum organized by the Taiwan People’s Party titled “Challenges and Prospects of Taiwan’s AI Industry and Energy Policy.” “Taiwan is currently pursuing industries with high added- value and is developing vigorously, and this all requires electricity,” said the chairman
‘POOP ON STAGE’: The song, which talks about the reluctance to graduate and anxiety about a lack of job opportunities, resonated with many students’ feelings The original song Poop on Stage has been chosen as National Taiwan University’s (NTU) graduation song this year, sparking much debate regarding the song’s title and content, which describes students’ anxiety about post-graduation unemployment. The title, Shang Tai Da Bian (上台大便), is a play on words that literally means “go on stage to poop.” The first three characters, shang tai da (上台大), also mean “to attend NTU,” as “Taida” is a common abbreviation for the university. The last character, bian (便), can mean “convenient” or “then,” but is more commonly associated with defecation. The lyrics of the song describe students’ reluctance to graduate and
RSS