DEFENSE/Air Force holds Mirage 2000 combat drills in Hsinchu

Hsinchu, Aug. 7 (CNA) Hsinchu Air Force Base on Friday carried out comprehensive drills involving Mirage 2000 fighter jets, simulating the sequence from an enemy airstrike to a counteroffensive.

The drills were held as part of Taiwan's annual Han Kuang military exercises, which began Wednesday.

Air Force personnel worked in four-person teams to carry an R.550 Magic air-to-air missile and mount it onto a launch rail beneath the wing of a Mirage 2000 before using a missile loader to equip the aircraft with a MICA missile.

Elsewhere on the base, personnel conducted an emergency runway repair drill.

A dump truck unloaded gravel into a mock missile crater created by an excavator. A grader then leveled the gravel-filled cavity before a bulldozer positioned a fiberglass expeditionary runway matting over it to create a flat surface for fighter jet landings and takeoffs.

Squadron leader Lin Chih-hsuan (林至軒) of the 2nd Tactical Fighter Wing said the entire process, from crater mapping to damage assessment and repair, had to be completed within four hours under Air Force requirements.

The base also carried out an emergency scramble drill in which two Mirage 2000 jets in their standard air defense configuration -- equipped with two MICA missiles, two R.550 Magic missiles and two external fuel tanks -- had to be airborne within six minutes of receiving an order from the Joint Air Operations Center.

A military source told CNA the drills were intended to simulate the sequence beginning with an enemy airstrike damaging the runway and ending with armed aircraft scrambling for a counteroffensive.