[Editorial] Swamped Fighter Jets

Typhoon Rusa is reported to swamp 16 fighter jets, paralyzing the air force operation for coming months. This shows how poorly the air force base responded to the typhoon. If the military can be so vulnerable to the `predicted` disaster, it will certainly not function to the fullest in a military emergency situation.

The Air Force made an excuse, saying, "It was because 900 mm of rain fell at once and nearby reservoir was inundated." The Air Force argues that they exerted great efforts to embrace for the typhoon, but it was irresistible for the fighter jets were inundated. Of course it is understandable that they were facing a difficult situation given the strongest-ever power of the typhoon which even swamped an entire city. But the military is obliged to do its best to maintain its combat power under any circumstances. Thus they should have taken every possible measure to prevent such incidents from happening including moving the fighter jets to another base.

The Air Force also deserved criticism for belatedly making public the incident after two days when the media reported part of the incident.

The Air Force said that it reported the damage to the related authorities in the Defense Ministry and could not make it public for military security. But the Air Force should ask itself whether it had no intention to hide the unprecedented incident.

A few days ago, President Kim Dae-jung instructed the Defense Ministry to revise upward the growth rate of defense Budget, which has been cut short for the next fiscal year. But as long as the military carelessly manage expensive arms, raising defense budget would be of no use. The case for raising defense budget can be persuasive when the military shows that they handle the expensive equipment provided with taxpayers` money.

The military authorities should identify the cause of the incident and problems that occurred in the process of its responding to the typhoon in order to ensure that such incidents would not recur.

Also they should repair the swamped fighter jets as soon as possible so that there will be no setback in air force operation. The public wants to see the military fully prepared for any type of situations.