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TAIPEI (AFP): Taiwan has grounded all of its F16 fighter jets for security checks as rescuers continue to search for one that disappeared during a training exercise, authorities said on Wednesday (November 18).
The decision removes about 150 aircraft from the skies of Taiwan.
The air force said a single-seat F16 flown by a 44-year-old pilot disappeared from radar at an altitude of about 1,800 meters (6,000 feet) two minutes after taking off from Hualien Air Base in eastern Taiwan on Tuesday night. .
The disappearance comes less than three weeks after a pilot was killed when his F-5E fighter jet crashed into the sea during training, causing a similar ground connection.
“The rescue mission is our top priority now. The air force has grounded all the F16s for checks and I have conducted an investigation into the cause of the incident,” President Tsai Ing-wen told reporters.
Its fighter fleet is old and vastly outnumbered by China’s. Without the F16s, it consists of the locally built Indigenous Defense Fighter, French-made Mirages from the late 1990s, and F5-E fighters dating from the 1970s.
There have been seven crashes with F16s since Taiwan received the fighters purchased from the United States in 1997.
The Taiwanese military has been hit by a series of plane crashes this year.
In January, eight senior officials, including the chief of the general staff, were killed in a helicopter crash.
Beijing has accumulated military, economic and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan since the election of President Tsai in 2016, in part due to its refusal to acknowledge its position that the island is part of “one China.”
During the US presidency, Donald Trump, Washington authorized $ 18 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, including 66 new-generation F16s and advanced missile platforms, sales that have angered Beijing.
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