Taiwan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

FangYuan said:

J-10, J-11, J-15, J-16, H-6 have very high operating and maintenance costs. The too much use in Taiwan airspace will reduce its life and strength and can make them repeat the fate of F-16 falling.

If China wants to harass Taiwan, the effective solution is to use J-5 and J-7 aircraft, it's cheap, powerful and easy to produce mass

Of course, J-5 and J-7 are not opponents of F-16 and F-CK, but it's not a problem. Taiwan did not dare to shoot these planes, because it was a war declaration. China can to punish and attack them.

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You have it the wrong way around.

Those flights serve valuable and desirable military roles, they are not done merely for the sake of harassment or geopolitical signaling.

Flying over water in international airspace at those distances from Chinese domestic airspace, sometimes in larger daily packages, are important for training and readiness and familiarity in operating over a region that could be a potential future area of conflict.
Given that, you would absolutely seek to fly aircraft in that airspace which would be involved in any such conflict in a regular way that would provide usefulness while not giving away useful intelligence, in this case for them being 4th generation fighters, bombers and various MPA, ELINT/SIGINT and AEWC aircraft.

In other words -- these are flight hours spent proactively with actual benefits for military readiness and training.
Flying old third generation fighters misses the point entirely.

9dashline said:

J16 isnt fly by wire upgraded yet?
I was playing a crappy f35 sim 20 years ago that wouldnt even let you ditch into the ocean even if you wanted to crash on purpose

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Not J16 but F16V!

The F16 does have an anti-collision ground system that will overtake the pilot to pull the plane up when the pilot is lost at sea and air to crash. According to Loma, the US F16 basically has this kit.

But the vegetable president felt that this system cost extra money and removed it from the upgrade program.

siegecrossbow said:

The gap has significantly worsened after PLAAF started doing the ADIZ incursions. Instead of doing proper combat training, ROCAF pilots, even new ones, have essentially been forced to waste precious flight hours on routine intercepts. Manpower shortage is the least of their worries right now.

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The pilot who crashed had only flown 60 hours on the F16 in two years, which averages out to 30 hours per year, a training issue that had nothing to do with the interception.

Shadow_Whomel said:

The pilot who crashed had only flown 60 hours on the F16 in two years, which averages out to 30 hours per year, a training issue that had nothing to do with the interception.

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62.2 hours in F-16 IIRC, his total flight time was 324.05 hours. He started flying in 2017 after graduating, at this stage he would've had about 90 hours flight time. So in the last 4 years he barely logged over 55 hours a year, most of that in AT-3 trainer and F-5. That is a pathetically low number of flight hours.

I think Auto-GCAS is still part of F-16V upgrade program at ROCAF but it's currently "under evaluation" whatever that means.

Temstar said:

I think Auto-GCAS is still part of F-16V upgrade program at ROCAF but it's currently "under evaluation" whatever that means.

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It means the ROCAF wanted to buy this upgrade but don’t have the financial pull to actually afford for it, or just outright government officials skimming off the funds to purchase the GCAS upgrade for themselves. (Either way is typical Taiwan military purchase scenario)

Temstar said:

62.2 hours in F-16 IIRC, his total flight time was 324.05 hours. He started flying in 2017 after graduating, at this stage he would've had about 90 hours flight time. So in the last 4 years he barely logged over 55 hours a year, most of that in AT-3 trainer and F-5. That is a pathetically low number of flight hours.

I think Auto-GCAS is still part of F-16V upgrade program at ROCAF but it's currently "under evaluation" whatever that means.

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For the time being they should stop practicing air to surface attacks with a cannon. What a stupid way to waste a pilot.

siegecrossbow said:

For the time being they should stop practicing air to surface attacks with a cannon. What a stupid way to waste a pilot.

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Very sensible suggestion.

Appix said:

We should not be mourning for dead Taiwanese. Those Hanjians would feast over our corpses when the chance would present itself.

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And people ask why Taiwanese aren't voting for immediate unification with the PRC.....

The black-box .

Also I note that siegecrossbow mentioned simulated cannon attacks. The article says:

"The aircraft had just completed a series of simulated missile launches, when it abruptly nosedived into the ocean, according to accounts given by another jet pilot, a ground controller, and another eyewitness in Chiayi."

Has it been confirmed by official sources that Captain Chen Yi had been making simulating a cannon attack, or was that speculation/unofficial media jumping the gun?

siegecrossbow said:

The gap has significantly worsened after PLAAF started doing the ADIZ incursions. Instead of doing proper combat training, ROCAF pilots, even new ones, have essentially been forced to waste precious flight hours on routine intercepts. Manpower shortage is the least of their worries right now.

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At some point they need to have some flight hours though right? I don't think the intercept hours are necessarily wasted. It's just a matter of either better allocation of hours, pilot rotations.

I once watched a Buffalo Bills vs Browns game in person that ended in 6-3 that started with a C-130 flyover, I think intercepts are more useful than that...

supersnoop said:

At some point they need to have some flight hours though right? I don't think the intercept hours are necessarily wasted. It's just a matter of either better allocation of hours, pilot rotations.

I once watched a Buffalo Bills vs Browns game in person that ended in 6-3 that started with a C-130 flyover, I think intercepts are more useful than that...

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If you are interviewing for a position at Google would it help to practice writing fizbuz and “hello world”? Okay I might be a bit too harsh, but you get my point.