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TAIPEI: A Taiwanese pilot was killed Thursday after his fighter jet crashed off the island’s east coast during routine training, the air force said, in the second fatal plane crash in three months.
Pilot Chu Kuang-meng was ejected from the F-5E aircraft after reporting an engine malfunction shortly after takeoff, the air force said.
The 29-year-old was rescued from the sea unconscious but could not be revived.
The accident comes as Taiwan’s aging and ill-equipped air force is forced to face an unprecedented level of incursions into its defense zone by Chinese fighters.
The island says it has mixed its fighters at twice the rate of last year in an effort to prevent Chinese aircraft.
Beijing sees autonomous democratic Taiwan as its own territory and has vowed to take it back one day, by force if necessary.
Analysts say China’s growing buzz over Taiwan is one way to test the island’s defense responses, but it also wears down its fighters.
The F-5E is a previous generation fighter with a design that dates back to the 1960s.
Air Force Chief of Staff Huang Chih-wei told reporters that all F-5 fighters have been punished by security checks since the accident.
In July, two crew members were killed in a helicopter crash while the Taiwanese military conducted drills on the island, including one simulating coastal assaults from China.
Taiwan has lived with the threat of invasion from China since the two sides separated in 1949 after a civil war.
Beijing has accumulated military, economic and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan since the election of President Tsai Ing-wen in 2016, partly due to its refusal to acknowledge its position that the island is part of “one China.”
