SNEAK PEAK:The ‘United Daily News’ reports a working draft of the military’s report into the July 1 accident cites a lack of simulator devices contributed to the mishap

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 25, 2016
By: Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter

A confluence of human errors were to blame for the accidental firing of a missile that sank a Taiwanese fishing boat near Penghu on July 1, the Chinese-language United Daily News reported yesterday.

The newspaper said it was given access to the working draft of the military’s report on the incident, which it characterized as “in a mostly finished form.”

Personnel on the navy’s Chinchiang-class corvette had primed and loaded the vessel’s pair of double-barrel anti-ship missile launchers for an in-port military drill that the ship was participating in, the newspaper cited the draft as saying.

During a drill, the tubes of the missile launchers are supposed to be individually loaded with live missiles and connected to simulator devices, so that the training simulator, and not the missile, receives targeting data and fire commands, which prevents the launchers from firing, the newpaper cites the draft report as saying.     [FULL  STORY]