Taiwan has signaled to US officials that it plans to move swiftly to complete a purchase of 66 new F-16 jets once US congressional foreign relations committees complete their review of the deal this month, a US Department of State official said.
The department on Aug. 20 formally notified the US Congress that it approved the sale, which includes munitions, defensive electronics and a top-of-the line fire-control radar that would allow precision-guided missiles and bombs to be launched from greater distances.
Once the deal is approved by Congress — and there has been no sign it will be blocked — Taiwan must submit a formal Letter of Offer and Acceptance that would be translated into a signed contract with delivery dates.
“According to our counterparts in Taiwan and the Taiwan representative’s office [in the US], they anticipate a quick move on their part” to finish the F-16 deal, US Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Rene Clarke Cooper said in an interview on Thursday after a breakfast meeting with reporters.
“If we are talking about the F-16s [alone] then the indicators are that’s a relatively quick turnaround from Taipei,” he said.
China has strongly objected to the sale of the jets built by Lockheed Martin.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) last month said that if US arms sales to Taiwan are not stopped “the Chinese side will surely make strong reactions, and the US will have to bear all the consequences.”
Congress has already approved a separate potential transaction for US$2 billion to sell Taiwan 108 M1A2 Abrams tanks, but no contracts have been announced for that deal.
“With every partner, we’re always looking at not only at their security requirements, we are looking at how they address it at home” in terms of budgets, Cooper said.
Negotiating a contract sometimes takes months and does not always result in a sale, but the Executive Yuan on Sept. 5 approved a special budget bill for the F-16 purchases, so the US approval process is in sync with Taiwan’s budget cycle.
“I strongly favor this sale going forward as quickly as possible,” US Senator Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said in an e-mail on Friday. “I remain concerned, however, that the administration created the appearance that our security commitment to Taiwan is up for negotiation with Beijing over US-China trade issues.”
The US, previously wary of antagonizing China, has not sold advanced fighter jets to Taiwan since then-US president George H.W. Bush announced the sale of 150 F-16s in 1992.
The administration of former US president Barack Obama rejected a similar Taiwanese request for new jets, but agreed to update its existing fleet.
Even if Taiwan moves quickly to complete the F-16 deal, there is a question as to how soon they could be delivered. Taiwan would be the fourth customer for the latest model of Lockheed’s iconic fighter, called the Block 70. They are being assembled at the contractor’s new facility in Greenville, South Carolina, which opened in April.
The first Block 70 jets are scheduled to roll off the Greenville line in late 2021, bound for Bahrain. Slovakia and Bulgaria are the other customers with orders.
It takes 36 to 39 months for the first aircraft to be delivered after a contract is signed, depending on customer requirements, Lockheed data showed.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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