The Philippine transport plane crashed and the Taiwan Army panicked

The Philippine transport plane crashed and the Taiwan Army panicked

A Philippine military C-130 transport plane crashed in the southern Philippines on the 4th local time, killing 53 people. This is the most serious military aircraft accident in the Philippines in nearly 30 years. This serious flight accident not only sounded the alarm for the rapid expansion of the Philippine air force, but also made Taiwan nervous.

What's going on?

According to Philippine military documents, the C-130H us made transport plane that crashed was a second-hand aircraft purchased by the Philippines from the US military in the name of "security cooperation assistance", which was officially delivered to the Philippine air force for service in February this year. The aircraft was manufactured in 1988 and has been in service for 33 years.

Taiwan's "United Daily" warned on the 7th that the second-hand C-130 introduced by the Philippines had problems, but the safety of the C-130 in active service of the Taiwan army was also worrying.

According to reports, the Taiwan Air Force has successively purchased 20 C-130H transport aircraft (one of which crashed in 1997). The first batch of 12 C-130H transport aircraft were delivered to Taiwan at the end of 1986. They have been in service for more than 30 years, even older than the one in the Philippines. What's more, the humid environment of Taiwan's islands, coupled with the frequent take-off and landing times of C-130H transport aircraft, has resulted in metal fatigue.

As early as 2015, Lockheed Martin of the United States issued a warning to Taiwan on this issue, making it clear that part of the aircraft body could not be strengthened and could only be replaced directly. Moreover, many American manufacturers of system components on the aircraft have closed down or no longer produced, making it more and more difficult to replace parts. Previous investigations and reports on the increase in accidents of us made military aircraft said that in order to save costs, some US suppliers used parts with insufficient performance stability on export-oriented aircraft. For example, the specified service life of some parts was five years, and the actual service life was only two years.

However, the Taiwan authorities remained unmoved. Even if the United States warned, the top military officials in Taiwan only said that they would "study" and "consider". Then there was no further discussion. Up to now, Taiwan's elderly c-130s are still "working with diseases". We can only count on God's blessing if there will be a tragedy like that in the Philippines.