Debris found near location of F-16 crash
TAIPEI: Taiwan found debris near the area where one of its most advanced fighter jets went missing, as the search for the pilot and his aircraft stretched into a second day.
The wreckage was found yesterday close to where the F-16V disappeared during a training exercise, Taiwan’s National Rescue Command Center said in a text message. It is the first sign the search has zeroed-in on the location of the incident.
The air force has halted all drills and training exercises for F-16V jets after the aircraft vanished from radar screens about half an hour after it took off from Chiayi Air Base just before 3pm on Tuesday. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has ordered the military and emergency services to treat the rescue operation as their top priority.
The jet was one of 64 Lockheed Martin F-16Vs that Taiwan brought into service in November as part of a $3.9 billion (130 billion baht) US-backed programme to beef up its ageing fleet. Experts pointed to the stresses on the air force posed by daily flights by Chinese military aircraft into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone and a resulting decline in training time.
“Taiwan’s Air Force should address the issue that training time for pilots are severely compressed due to frequent Chinese incursions,” former Air Force Lieutenant General Chang Yanting told the Liberty Times. “The pilot of the missing jet only flew an F-16 for a little over 60 hours since March 2020. That’s just one-third of the time he would have been given under normal circumstances.”
The plane fell into the sea when conducting a shooting drill, according to a media briefing in Taipei.