《TAIPEI TIMES》 Air force drills test defense skills in Pingtung County

/ Staff writer, with CNA

The air force yesterday started its annual Tien Lung drills, with the bulk of the exercises taking place in Pingtung County’s Jiadong Township （佳冬）, a military source said.

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Indigenous Defense Fighters, F-16Vs and Mirage 2000 jets were taking part in the annual maneuvers, which run until Friday next week and also include competitive testing of the air force’s air-to-ground, air-to-sea, air-to-air and land-based combat skills, the source said.

A gathering of fighter jets at Jiashan Air Base in Hualien County, which normally takes place prior to the drills, has been canceled due to the COVID-19 situation, they said.

Instead, air force units would fly directly to their designated firing and shooting areas, they added.

The decision to host the bulk of the exercises in Jiadong is to test the air force’s ability to defend the southwest of Taiwan, in particular its air defense identification zone （ADIZ）, the source said.

Such a zone is airspace in which the identification, location and control of civilian aircraft is performed in the interest of national security. Such areas might extend beyond a country’s territory to give it more time to respond to possibly hostile aircraft.

In the past few years, Beijing has dispatched hundreds of military sorties to enter Taiwan’s ADIZ, with the Ministry of National Defense stating that some aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

Last month, emergency landing and takeoff drills were held on a public road — the Jiadong section of Provincial Highway No. 1 — as part of Taiwan’s annual Han Kuang military exercises.

The drills, which were part of a simulated attack on Taiwan, were designed to see if pilots and aircraft were capable of using public roads as improvised airstrips should enemy forces render regular runways unusable.

The source said the strategies and tactics used in this year’s Tien Lung exercises were aimed at bolstering a defense of Taiwan primarily from the Jiadong area.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES