Mistakenly-fired missile unable to be destroyed externally: MND
ROC Central News Agency
2016/07/03 15:11:00
Taipei, July 3 (CNA) The anti-ship missile launched by mistake on Friday carried a live warhead, not one used for drills or testing, and could not have been destroyed externally after it was accidentally fired, according to the Ministry of National Defense (MND).
In the MND's detailed question-and-answer statement released Saturday on the missile blunder, it revealed that the Hsiung Feng III was not carrying a dummy warhead used for drills or testing.
While explaining the reason why it was unable to trigger the self-destruct mechanism on the missile by remote control from far away, the MND said there are two kinds of self-destruct mechanisms on a regular missile, one built externally that can be activated manually and another installed inside the warhead.
During military exercises and missile testing drills, most bombs used are implanted with externally-activated self-destruct mechanisms that allow them to be destroyed remotely should anything go wrong, to guarantee safety, the MND said.
But for non-testing warheads, they are installed only with an internal self-destruct mechanism, it said. This self-destruct mechanism will only activate in the event of a miss.
In this case, the self-destruct mechanism of the misfired missile did not activate because it hit the fishing boat, ripping through the vessel before crashing into the water, the ministry explained.
The missile cut through the fishing boat because it was flying at high speed, and the fishing boat, which was likely designed to be thin and light, provided little resistance, thanks to which, the warhead did not explode, according to the Navy and MND.
A Navy 500-ton Chinchiang-class corvette accidentally launched the missile from the Zuoying Military Harbor in Kaohsiung at 8:15 a.m. Friday.
The missile traveled for some two minutes before ripping through the "Hsiang Li Sheng" (翔利昇) fishing boat, killing the boat's captain and injuring three other crewmen.
The fishing boat was an estimated 40 nautical miles from the harbor in southern Taiwan. A chart provided by the Navy showed that the simulated position targeted by the missile was in the Taiwan Strait, northwest of the harbor and southeast of the offshore county of Penghu.
At a Friday's press conference at the Zuoying military base in Kaohsiung, Navy Commander Huang Shu-kuang (黃曙光) said the man behind the fatal missile blunder was a sergeant on the corvette, who set off the missile without following procedures or without any superior officers present while the missile was in the wrong launch mode.
Explaining how a self-destruct mechanism of a missile works, Huang said when the missile is launched, it will automatically activate its target-seeking function to search for its designated target.
If the missile fails to locate its target, it will continue to cruise and will destroy itself after a certain distance of cruising, Huang said.
However, the general pointed out that when the missile was close to its target position, the fishing boat happened to be around. The distance between the vessel and the missile's designated target was nearly 1.9 miles, he said.
In the MND statement released Saturday, the ministry said a self-destruct mechanism would be installed only in missiles during a formal military exercise.
The sailors on the Chinching-class corvette in Kaohsiung were not participating in such an exercise Friday, but instead just conducting a "test of training results."
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has ordered the Navy Command Headquarters to take full responsibility for the management of the Navy's fleet, personnel discipline, education and training. She has also instructed the military to put forth concrete plans to improve the control of military weapons within two months.
(By Elizabeth Hsu)
ENDITEM/cs/ke
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