Taiwan’s air force on Tuesday put on hold battle training for its F-16 fleet after a lately upgraded design of the competitor jet crashed into the sea in the most recent of a series of accidents.
The island’s Defense Ministry stated the F-16V, one of the most advanced enter Taiwan’s fleet, went missing from radar screens after removing from the Chiayi Air Base in southerly Taiwan for a training goal over a seaside firing range.
President Tsai Ing-wen released instructions to spare no initiatives in the search and also rescue mission and also “to further clarify the reason for the crash,” her representative said.
The government’s Rescue Command Facility stated witnesses had actually seen the airplane collision into the sea and helicopters and ships were looking for the pilot.
Flying Force Inspector-General Liu Hui-Chien stated the aircraft had just recently been updated to the “V” variation, with brand-new tools systems as well as avionics.
Fight training for the F-16 fleet has currently been put on hold, he added.
In late 2020, an F-16 vanished shortly after removing from the Hualien Air Base on Taiwan’s eastern shore on a regular training objective.
In 2015, two F-5E boxers, which initially went into solution in Taiwan in the 1970s, crashed right into the sea off the southeast coast after they evidently collided in mid-air during a training objective.
While Taiwan’s air force is well educated, it has strained from consistently clambering to see off Chinese military aircraft in the past 2 years, though the accidents have actually not been linked by any means to these intercept tasks.
China, which asserts the democratic island as its own, has actually been regularly sending out airplanes into Taiwan’s air defense zone, mostly in an area around the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands however in some cases also into the airspace in between Taiwan and the Philippines.
Resources – CNN
Last Updated: 12 Jan 2022
