Armed forces botch attacks

Stuff like this has gotta make you wonder if all the weapons performance in military simulations is truly accurate under combat conditions.

Editorial from The China Post

Armed forces botch attacks

2005/11/1

In another costly botch Taiwan's submarines fired four torpedoes in two many sea maneuvers last year. In the first mock war, two were launched to sink target ships, but neither scored a hit. President Chen Shui-bian, for whom the navy held that exercise, proffered comfort and asked for another torpedo attack. Two were fired, and one of them hit the bull's eye. One hit out of four launches certainly was a costly botch. Now it's the turn of the other two services to do their shares to join an expensive club of mutual commiseration. The air force sent its best F-16 fighters and the army its helicopters to waters off Hsinchu at the end of last month to attack and sink a Korean benzene carrier, that was capsized but not adrift and of course abandoned after a disastrous collision with a much larger freighter.

Eight missiles, which cost the country at least NT$10 million, were launched but none scored a direct hit. The target ship remained capsized, not adrift and all but intact, except a couple of new small holes in the exposed bow.

But Admiral Lee Jye, minister of national defense, called the much more expensive second botch a "tactical success." Maybe. If you think the navy successfully made the other two services look just as bad as it was, that certainly was a tactical success on its part.

The fact is that Taiwan's armed forces have not been trained to use the weapons, which look more like exorbitantly expensive toys of the brass hats than ever before. There is a very legitimate and more than justifiable doubt that the defense force which failed in exercises -- with everything prearranged according to a scenario in a simulated situation -- could succeed in actual combat.

If the results of all the exercises were the guide, we are afraid, none of the warships in a Chinese armada arriving off Taiwan's coast for an invasion would be sunk. Then, what's the use of more sophisticated weapons for which Taiwan plans to spend billions of dollars?