Taiwan Flew F-16s Again Before It Knew Why Hsin Died

Taiwan put its F-16 fighters back in the air on January 12, 2026, six days after Captain Hsin Po-yi vanished off Hualien. The 29-year-old’s jet, tail number 6700, had dropped off radar during a night training flight, and search crews never found him.

The Air Force called the stand-down Tien-an 2, ran inspections, and sent four Vipers down a Hualien runway with the 5th Tactical Mixed Wing’s commander in one of the cockpits. The recorder that could explain the dive was still in the water. The watchdog report that later rebuked the service was six months away.

The Radio Calls From 6700

Hsin, a 2019 Air Force Academy graduate assigned to the 5th Wing, took off from Hualien Air Base at 6:17 p.m. on January 6 for a routine night hop in a single-seat F-16V. Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo went to Air Force Headquarters that night and ordered air, sea, and ground units, plus the National Rescue Command Center, the National Air Service Corps, and the Coast Guard, into the search.

The first official picture put him about 10 nautical miles (18 kilometers) east of Fengbin Township, with a suspected ejection at about 7:29 p.m. The picture tightened the next morning. Inspector General Chiang Yi-cheng, citing audio from the lead jet, said Hsin lost the formation at 7:27 p.m. after the pair entered cloud. At 7:27:30 p.m. he reported “two lost,” meaning key flight data had dropped. He called that he would eject at 7:28:22 p.m., and the radar skin paint vanished about eight seconds later, which the ministry had rounded to 7:29 p.m.

Colonel Chou Ming-ching of the 5th Wing’s 27th Tactical Squadron said the top killers for F-16 pilots are midair collisions, spatial disorientation, G-induced loss of consciousness, and controlled flight into terrain. On this tape, Chou said, Hsin knew he had lost his sense of which way was up and did what the book asks.

THE JET AND THE PILOT

• Pilot time: Hsin had 611 flight hours in all, 371 of them in F-16Vs.
• Airframe time: Jet 6700 had 3,894 hours on the clock and 5,447 hours on the engine.
• Last heights: He called eject at 2,600 feet; radar lost him at 170 feet.
• Last fix: The lead jet later marked his position about 31 nautical miles (57 kilometers) south of Hualien Air Base.

Chiang told reporters the flight computer had sounded “EJECT, EJECT, EJECT,” but the service had no ping from a survival beacon and could not prove the seat fired. That silence shaped the whole search. Crews were working a night sea with 3-meter swells, winds at 6 to 7 and gusts to 9, and no locator to walk toward. The Air Force still said the weather and sea state sat inside exercise limits.

Six Days Later the Vipers Were Flying

Training on the type stopped while Hualien, Taichung, and Chiayi jets went through extra checks. Alert and standby sorties stayed on the board. Koo told lawmakers the special inspection, run as Tian’an II, should finish by January 10 and that combat cover should not go hollow.

On January 12, Air Force Headquarters said Tien-an 2 was done, simulators and ground school had been run, and training was back on. Photographs showed four F-16Vs lining up at Hualien, one of them flown by Maj. Gen. Hu Chung-hua, the 5th Wing chief. Every jet in the check had passed.

The first night of the search put 13 aircraft and 11 ships on station, with 119 people on the coast. The Air Force said it would keep going past the usual 72-hour rescue window. Hsin’s family was brought onto the Hualien base. President Lai Ching-te had already told officials to put the man’s safety first and to search at full scale.

By January 15 the flight data recorder had been located, still too deep for Taiwan’s own salvage teams, and the service was talking to firms in Singapore and Japan. Hsin had not been found. The jets were already flying.

The Jet Had Navigation Faults That Week

Chou walked reporters through the computer. The modular mission computer, fitted when older Block 20 airframes were rebuilt as F-16Vs, had several failure levels. On 6700, he said, the flight path dropped off the display, so Hsin could not read his attitude.

There are several levels of modular mission computer malfunctions. In this case, the aircraft’s flight path was no longer displayed, so Captain Hsin was unable to obtain information on his attitude.

Colonel Chou Ming-ching, 5th Wing 27th Tactical Squadron, Hualien news conference

Lt. Col. Ting Wei-hsuan, the 5th Wing’s logistics chief, said only 6700 had shown the fault that night, and that the jet had no mission-computer snags in the prior six months. Fault logs from the fleet, he said, already go to the United States, and the Air Force would push American engineers for software fixes. Officials also noted a backup attitude instrument exists when the main computer dies. What Hsin could still see in that cockpit has not been made public.

The mission computer was not the only box in play. Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Lee Ching-jan told the legislature on January 12 that 6700 had 35 maintenance work orders from the previous October through the crash day, and that none of them were for the mission computer. He also confirmed a January 4 job for an embedded GPS and inertial navigation failure, two days before the flight, and said that class of fault would be part of the inquiry. A separate Air Force account said the jet had finished a major inspection on October 30, 2025, and flown 35 hours after that check.

Those two “35” figures are not the same thing. One is a stack of work orders. The other is hours in the air after the autumn inspection. Together they describe a jet that kept coming back to the shop and still went night flying over water.

The Anti-Collision Kit Taiwan Ordered After a Mountain Crash

Koo told the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee that Taiwan’s 66 new F-16C/D Block 70 jets come with an automatic ground collision avoidance system as standard. The 139 F-16Vs already on the line, older Block 20 airframes rebuilt with Viper avionics, do not have it. The United States was contracted to upgrade 141 of those jets. Two of them, including 6700, have since gone into the sea.

TWO F-16 FLEETS, TWO SAFETY KITS

The kit watches speed, heading, and a terrain file, warns the pilot, and, if no one answers, rolls the jet upright and pulls a 5-G climb. NASA and the U.S. Air Force matured it on F-16s; American squadrons started flying it in 2014. Taiwan started shopping after an F-16 hit a mountain during the 2018 Han Kuang exercise and killed Capt. Wu Yen-ting. The buy was approved in 2019. A 2021 U.S. contract worth $138 million bundled the kit with other work. The rebuilt Vipers still use analog flight controls, so the install needs extra wiring, airframe cuts, and a hybrid flight-control computer. Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, described that splice as the reason the old jets lag the new ones.

In May, Lee told lawmakers software updates would start in July, hardware in September, and the system would be fully in service by 2028. Control Yuan investigators later said the kit would not have directly fixed the kind of navigation failure Hsin reported. They still told the Air Force to keep pressing U.S. partners to finish the work.

Chiayi Lost an F-16V in January 2022

Jet 6700 was not the first upgraded Viper Taiwan has put in the water. In January 2022, Capt. Chen Yi, 27, died when an F-16V went down off Chiayi. Remains recovered in the search were identified by DNA. At that time, officers already said Auto-GCAS was part of the Viper upgrade on paper and that no jet in service yet carried it. Installation was then described as a 2023 job. It did not arrive.

The 2026 loss followed the same outline in one respect that should have been closed: a Viper without the automatic pull-up, a night environment, and a young captain out of time. The 2026 tape adds the mission-computer and navigation layer the 2022 public file did not carry in the same way. Peace Phoenix Rising, the rebuild that turned the 1990s Block 20s into F-16Vs, was finished in February 2024. The safety kit that was supposed to ride along was still a wiring job.

What the Control Yuan Found in July

Members Yeh Yi-jin and Lai Ting-ming issued corrective measures against the Air Force on July 23. They said the recorder readout was still unfinished, but the paper they already had was enough to act. Under the Control Act, the receiving agency has two months to write back with fixes.

THE WATCHDOG FILE

• Repeat faults: Navigation gear on 6700 showed repeat or intermittent failures in the week before the crash, even after troubleshooting and passed checks.
• Night risk: The service did not adequately control the risk of sending that jet on a night sortie in that condition.
• Paperwork: Maintenance work orders that should have been filled were blank, and crash evidence was not kept as the rules require.
• The last minutes: After the navigation failure, Hsin switched to visual formation flying, then lost the lead in cloud, lost his sense of up and down, and went in.
• The U.S. comparison: Investigators pointed to a December 2023 F-16 mishap at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea, where a pilot ejected after a navigation failure and survived, and they argued Taiwan should copy that conservative dispatch and eject culture.

The Control Yuan cleared the Air Force on one public fight. Hsin had been issued a cold-weather suit, water temperatures did not require it, and the suit only helps if the seat works. On Auto-GCAS, the members repeated the technical lag and the limit of the kit against a dead navigation picture, then told the service to keep pushing anyway.

Air Force Command said it respected the file and was already reviewing night-flight risk, maintenance, simulator work, and rest rules after travel. It said a dedicated task force still had the crash. It also said it was adding a flight-safety management system and still asking the United States to hurry Auto-GCAS.

A Funeral Without a Body

Lai presented a presidential citation on July 19 and attended the funeral. Hsin was promoted posthumously from captain to major, effective July 6, and given the Order of Loyalty and Valor. The citation said he hit fast-changing weather and poor night visibility and died on duty. Lai asked the defense ministry to support the family, including Hsin’s wife, who also serves in the military. Search crews never recovered a body.

FROM THE DIVE TO THE FILE

1. January 6, 2026: Hsin and jet 6700 disappear during a night training flight off Hualien.
2. January 12, 2026: Tien-an 2 inspections end and F-16 training resumes, with Maj. Gen. Hu Chung-hua in one of the first four jets.
3. January 15, 2026: The flight data recorder is located in deep water; Hsin is still missing.
4. March 16, 2026: A salvage company hired by the Air Force retrieved the flight data recorder on March 16 and brought it ashore for shipment to the U.S. maker.
5. May 26, 2026: Lee tells lawmakers Auto-GCAS software starts in July, hardware in September, with the fleet kit in service by 2028.
6. July 19, 2026: Lai honors Hsin at a funeral held without remains.
7. July 23, 2026: The Control Yuan orders the Air Force to correct night-risk and maintenance failures on the January crash.

Chiang’s line on the first morning still sits under that list. The computer had screamed eject. The seat locator never spoke. In July, Air Force Command said the crash remained with a dedicated task force, and the U.S. manufacturer was still decoding the box that had spent two months on the bottom.