《TAIPEI TIMES》Military sorties up 20 percent: report

/ Staff writer, with CNA

The nation’s armed forces have deployed more than 4,000 sorties of military aircraft so far this year, a 20 percent increase from the same period last year, a Ministry of National Defense report said on Monday.

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Amid increasing military coercion by China, the armed forces have carried out 4,132 sorties by aircraft and 7,531 sorties by navy vessels in surveillance, combat readiness and fishery patrol missions and exercises this year, the report said.

Between Sept. 16 and Sunday, Chinese aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone and/or crossed the Taiwan Strait median line 11 times, ministry data showed.

The report did not compare the sorties dispatched this year with those in the same period last year, but Minister of National Defense Yen De-fa （嚴德發） late last month said that the air force has so far this year dispatched 20 percent more aircraft on patrol missions compared with the same period last year.

The report said that during the live-fire section of this year’s Han Kuang exercises in July, the military tested its new combined arms battalions, F-16V jets and “Clouded Leopard” eight-wheeled armored vehicles, to make sure they can work together with existing military units and boost joint defense operational abilities.

The military has allocated a budget to improve its radar surveillance abilities in response to the increasing military threat posed by Chinese stealth aircraft and uncrewed aerial combat vehicles, the report said.

Yen is scheduled to answer lawmakers’ questions at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee in Taipei today.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES