A US military delegation is to arrive in Taiwan in September to evaluate the army's future weaponry needs, marking the second trip of its kind to be made by US military personnel to Taiwan in a decade, a local Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday.
The US military team, called a "ground-force evaluation team," is to be comprised of officials from the US army and the Pacific command, the paper said.
The team is to stay in Taiwan for two to three weeks, during which time team members will visit different segments of the army, including aviation, armored forces, missiles and communications units, the paper said.
According to the report, the last time the US sent a similar ground-force evaluation team to Taiwan was over 10 years ago.
The US team is expected to offer advice to Taiwan's army about what kinds of weapons and equipment it requires in order to increase its combat strength.
The kinds of weapons and equipment that the US evaluation team is most likely to recommend to the army include the AH-64D Apache attack helicopter and the M1-A2 main battle tank, the report said.
It also speculated that the US had sent a similar evaluation team to evaluate Taiwan's air force and navy over the past two years and that as a result the US agreed to sell them the weaponry and equipment they desperately needed -- AIM-120 medium-range air-to-air missiles and the Kidd-class destroyers and submarines.
The Ministry of National Defense declined to comment on the report, but an official with the ministry was willing to confirm the report in private.
"It is true that the US military is planning to send an evaluation team to Taiwan this year. But I am not certain when they will come. They are to visit the army this time," the defense official said.
"The US military has sent two similar evaluation teams to Taiwan over the past two years to evaluate the combat needs of the air force and the navy," the official said.
"The reason the air force and the navy were evaluated ahead of the army was that the US military believes that controlling Taiwan's airspace and surrounding seas are the two most important priorities in defending Taiwan," he said.
The defense official declined to speculate whether the army would get the AH-64D helicopter and the M1-A2MBT after the team's visit.
The official did say that military exchanges between Taiwan and the US have become much more frequent since the change of government in the US.
"It is hard to tell how frequent the US military has been sending personnel to Taiwan. But the number of visits made by US military personnel to Taiwan this year surely surpasses that of any other year since the ending of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1979," the official said.
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