Delivery of F-16 jets and attending equipment would be delayed, while the second batch of the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) is ahead of schedule and would be delivered by next year, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday.
The ministry’s budget for this year, delivered to the Legislative Yuan yesterday, and the special budget for the government’s procurement of new fighter jets showed that the remaining 15 purchases are on schedule.
Programs on schedule include the shore-mounted Harpoon Coastal Defense System, the purchases of M1A2T Abrams Main Battle Tanks (MBT) and 74 tankers, the ministry said.
Photo: AFP
The Harpoon missile system, consisting of 32 vehicle launcher systems and 128 missiles, was part of a NT$71 billion (US$2.2 billion) deal approved in 2020. The full delivery is scheduled for completion in 2028.
Thirty-eight of the 108 M1A2 tanks were delivered in December last year, with two additional shipments of 42 tanks each expected to arrive this year and next.
The ministry attributed the fighter jet delays to two issues, the first being the delayed delivery of the AGM-154 Joint Stand-off Weapon missiles — which the air force’s F-16V jets are equipped with from 2023 to next year — due to US production capabilities and trial times.
Second, the newly built F-16 block 70 jets have just rolled off Lockheed-Martin’s production lines and are undergoing ground tests, with the first jets expected to be flown back to Taiwan next year.
Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) on Thursday last week said that Taiwan intends to send deputy minister-level officials, accompanied by the air force’s deputy chief of staff, to attend the ceremonial event in the US marking the jet’s completion.
The ministry purchased 29 HIMARS and 84 MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) last year, with the first batch of 11 HIMARS and 64 ATACMS arriving that same year.
The remaining 18 HIMARS are expected to be delivered next year, ahead of the originally scheduled 2027, the ministry said.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS