Cost of Taiwan’s ageing Mirage jets in spotlight again as fighter goes missing
Island struggling to maintain more expensive French aircraft amid budget squeeze, observers say
The suspected crash of yet another of Taiwan’s French fighter jets has again focused attention on the rising maintenance costs of the ageing aircraft and Taipei’s shrinking defence budget.
Taiwan’s air force grounded all of its Mirage jets after a single-seat Mirage 2000 disappeared from the radar 34 minutes after take-off on Tuesday night from a base in Hsinchu across the Taiwan Strait from Fujian province during a routine training exercise, air force deputy commander Lieutenant General Chang Che-ping said on Wednesday.
“The military will continue searching day and night until the pilot is safely rescued. There is no so-called golden 72-hour limit,” Chang said, referring to the window for finding a pilot alive.
The pilot, Ho Tzu-yu, joined the air force more than a decade ago and had 227 hours of flight time in Mirages, but there was no indication Ho had ejected, the Central News Agency reported.
It is the sixth major accident involving Mirages since Taiwan bought 60 of the aircraft from France two decades ago. In that time, 10 per cent of the jets have crashed.