Defense News

(Military News Agency reporter, Lin Jing-Jie, Taipei, February 24th) Minister of National Defense Gao Guang-Chi and Political Deputy Minister of Interior Affairs Chen Chun-Jing attended the “2016 73rd Military Service Celebration cum Award Ceremony” today and praised 116 departments and 270 outstanding personnel for their performance in missions such as “Promotion of Military Recruitment” and “Conducting Administrative Operations for Military Enlistment”. During the ceremony, Minister of National Defense Gao Guang-Chi expressed his gratitude and acknowledgment for the efforts and support provided by the central government departments, local government departments and the schools in military recruitment and enlistment.

Minister Gao expressed that, in recent years, with the support of the Executive Yuan and other departments, the transform of the military conscription into “Military Recruitment System” has progressively achieved success in the reform of the regulations, strengthened the promotion of the recruitment, made adjustments to the remuneration of military personnel, encouraged further studies in the military and completed improvements on the retirement and guidance systems. The number of recruitment has increased from 26,260 in 2012 to 40,452 in 2015 while retention rate has also improved from 47.2% to 73.2%, an achievement that can be witnessed by all.

Minister Gao pointed out that “Military Recruitment” is not only a major reform in Taiwan’s military conscription, it is also the key to success of our military reforms. Since 2015, the Taiwan military has gradually replaced the National Servicemen with fulltime military recruits, and converted the military conscription system into 4 months of National Service for males born after 1994. After the completion of the National Service, they will be registered within the Reserve Service to ensure a sufficient mobilization force.

Minister Gao expressed that the design of the system will allow the people to remain closely connected with the military affairs and in times of enemy attacks or major crisis, the military will be able to provide ample troops as support and avoid incidents of the people’s disinterest in military affairs.

Minister Gao stressed that from the average scores of 90% and above for the military physical tests and the armed forces training exercise, as well as the “Han-Kuang 31 Exercise” and the Tainan Earthquake, the officers and soldiers have exhibited excellent combat readiness and capability as well as specialization proficiency. These are the results of increased military service time, and strict training.

He also further indicated that in response to the diversity of the military needs in 2015, the Ministry of Interior Affairs and Ministry of National Defense have closely collaborated to adopt the “Overall Control and Flexible Adjustment” policy to adjust the training ratio for the first and second half years from 3:7 to 4:6. During the peak of training in summer, the Ministry of National Defense has also foreseen possible risks and established support mechanisms to deploy the North, Central and South Orientation Training Centers of the Reserve Command. In addition, from this year onwards, the Army has also established the South and North Specialized Orientation Training Centers in Kaohsiung and Taoyuan respectively to be used in orientation training, so the military is confident of meeting the projected targets for orientation training.