“We need to train them to be fearless. We need to train them to be better prepared,” said Flight Commander Chia-Hsien Chao, 34, an instructor at the base who is also an Air Force Academy graduate.
Taiwan defense officials say a turning point was the trip last August by Nancy Pelosi, who as House speaker at the time was the most senior U.S. official to visit the island in 25 years. China strongly opposed and condemned Pelosi’s visit, which it viewed as promoting Taiwan independence, and responded after she left with live-fire drills that encircled the island for the first time.
Since then China has stepped up its military activities around Taiwan, including sorties toward the island that are sent almost daily. The planes are also crossing the median line, an unofficial boundary in the Taiwan Strait, more regularly.
On Wednesday, Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense said that as of 6 a.m. local time (6 p.m. Tuesday ET), it had detected 26 Chinese military airplanes, including nine that crossed the median line or entered Taiwan’s self-declared air defense identification zone, around the island in the last 24 hours.
China also simulated an aerial and naval blockade around Taiwan and practiced precision strikes in exercises held in April after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with Pelosi’s successor, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in California.
Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, said most Taiwanese government officials share U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s assessment that war over Taiwan is “neither imminent nor inevitable.”
“We don’t see the threat [from China] as imminent, but the threat has been increasing. It is very apparent,” Wu said.
Taiwan has 210,000 active members in its armed forces, compared with China’s more than 2 million, but it aims to make the most of those numbers by improving defenses and intensifying training for troops and reservists. The island is extending compulsory military service for men to one year from four months starting next year, and is pressing the U.S. to speed the delivery of 66 additional F-16s that Taiwan purchased in 2019.
Pilots at the Taitung base expect the planes, which are seen as crucial to the island’s defense capabilities, to arrive there in the next two years. They would increase the size of Taiwan’s F-16 fleet to more than 200, one of the biggest in Asia.
China regularly expresses opposition to such arms sales, accusing the U.S. of interfering in China’s internal affairs and worsening tensions in the Taiwan Strait.
The U.S., which does not have official relations with Taiwan, has a long-standing policy of “strategic ambiguity” in terms of how it would respond if China attacked Taiwan. The idea is to deter Beijing from invading and discourage Taipei from doing something — like declaring independence — that might provoke a military response from its neighbor.
President Joe Biden, however, has appeared to move away from strategic ambiguity by saying on several occasions that Washington would step in to defend Taiwan. Each time, the White House later said that U.S. policy on the island had not changed.
Ultimately, however, Taiwan officials say they know that the island has to be as prepared as possible to defend itself.
“If we are not willing or capable of defending ourselves, I think we don’t have any right to ask any other countries to help Taiwan,” Wu said.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
