Taiwan Air Force Loses Second Jet Fighter This Year
Crash comes as the war in Ukraine intensifies concerns about Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against China
TAIPEI—A Taiwanese jet fighter plunged into the sea Monday, the second such incident this year and the seventh since the start of 2020, leading the island’s air force to ground some of its military aircraft amid growing tensions with China.
Taiwan’s air force said the pilot ejected from his single-seat Mirage 2000 aircraft in a parachute at 11:26 a.m. local time, more than an hour after it took off on a combat training mission from an airfield in the eastern county of Taitung.
The pilot, who is alive and in good condition, was pulled out of the water by a helicopter roughly 40 minutes later and sent to a hospital in Taitung for a medical examination, the air force said, adding that a special task force has been sent to the airfield to investigate the cause of the crash.
Lt. Col. Huang Chung-kai, 39 years old and an experienced Mirage flight instructor, reported experiencing a mechanical problem before bailing out of the aircraft, a military official said Monday.
A spokesman for Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said in a statement that the defense minister immediately reported the incident to the president, who ordered an investigation and continued search for the aircraft.
During a Monday news conference following the crash, Maj. Gen. Liu Hui-chien, the Taiwan Air Force’s inspector general, said all of the island’s Mirage 2000s are being grounded for safety checks. Training missions for other aircraft—including F-16s and Indigenous Defense Fighters—are also being suspended, while surveillance and patrol missions remain unaffected.
The plane crash comes as the war in Ukraine intensifies concerns about Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a possible invasion by China’s People’s Liberation Army. Beijing, which regards Taiwan as part of China, has vowed to take control of the democratically self-ruled island by force if necessary.
During the past two years, China’s military has sent jet fighters, bombers and other military aircraft on sorties near Taiwan on a nearly daily basis, part of what Taiwan describes as a form of “gray zone” warfare. Beijing’s aim, according to Taiwanese officials, is to probe and exhaust the island’s defenses, while discouraging Taipei from tightening ties with Washington and other democratic capitals.
The Taiwanese Air Force said China’s PLA on Monday sent a total of 13 warplanes—mostly its J-10 and J-16 jet fighters—just southwest of Taiwan’s airspace.
Maj. Gen. Liu said the grounding of Mirage 2000s wouldn’t affect Taiwan’s air defenses. The island has enough other jet fighters to ensure that patrol missions, “which are at a high-threat level, can be fully fulfilled,” he said.
Monday’s crash is the latest in a string of accidents, some of them deadly, experienced by Taiwan’s air force during the past two years. In January, a Taiwanese pilot died after his F-16 plunged into the ocean, prompting questions from lawmakers about strain on fighter pilots.
The French-made Mirage 2000 is an aging single-engine fighter that was introduced in the late 1970s by Dassault Aviation SA and is no longer in production. The aircraft involved in Monday’s incident was built in 1998, the air force said.
A Taiwan Air Force Mirage 2000 went missing while on a training mission in 2017. Taiwan’s military reported locating the jet’s black box nearly two years later, but hasn’t publicly released any findings from it.