A US$2.5 billion contract to sell 30 AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters to the Taiwanese Army, sent to US Congress in October 2008 for approval, is on schedule, Defense News reported on Monday.
Since the notification, and especially in the wake of the announcement of a US$6.4 billion US arms sale to Taiwan earlier this year, there had been speculation that Beijing would pressure Boeing Co, the manufacturer of the AH-64, into canceling the deal.
Boeing, a subsidiary of McDonnell Douglas, was among the US firms singled out by Beijing as facing potential retaliatory sanctions for participating in the deal. It also sold Taiwan US$37 million in Harpoon training missiles.
A letter of offer and acceptance was signed last year between Taipei and Washington and a joint US government-Boeing team is expected to visit Taipei in the middle of next month to finalize the deal, the magazine reported, citing sources in the Taiwanese and US defense industries.
The helicopters are armed with Stinger air-to-air missiles and AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire missiles and are part of efforts by the Taiwanese Army to modernize its aviation capabilities.
US-Taiwan Business Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers told Defense News there was no reason to “believe that the first of the Apaches won’t start arriving [in] late 2012 [or] early 2013 as ordered.”
“While China’s position on arms sales [to Taiwan] is well-known, the position of all contracting parties is this is a government-to-government sale ... [and] therefore there is no reason to believe that Boeing would not follow through on a transaction/order from the US Army irrespective of any pressure China may try to bring,” he said.
While Hammond-Chambers said he was unaware of pressure from Beijing regarding the helicopter sale, a local US defense industry source told Defense News that “I can ... guarantee that Boeing is getting heat in Beijing.”
In September last year, Boeing said China would require 3,770 new airplanes valued at about US$400 billion over the next 20 years. Boeing and its European rival Airbus are vying for a share of that market.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS