The administration of US President George W. Bush may let Taiwan take delivery of advanced air-to-air missiles originally sold on condition they not be delivered straight away for fear of triggering an arms race, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
At issue is the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM, which could be deployed on Taiwan's US-built F-16 fighter fleet. Taiwan contracted for 120 of the combat-proven missiles in 2000. They are now in production by Raytheon Co.
"Our policy requires that these missiles not be released to Taiwan unless there is evidence that China has similar missiles as part of its operational inventory," said Defense Department spokesman Air Force Major Jay Steuck.
"Our policy is under review," he said. "No decision has been made" on whether the missiles will be sent.
Word of the policy review follows China's reported testing last week of a similar "fire-and-forget" missile, the AA-12 "Adder" built by Russia. Once fired, such missiles use an active radar on board to guide them independently.
The Washington Times, the first to report the test-firing, cited US defense officials as saying two Russian-built Su-30 fighters had used the weapons to destroy target drones.
Any deployment of the AA-12, known as the R-77 in Russia, would significantly enhance Chinese combat capabilities against Taiwan's air force, defense experts said.
In Taipei, Major General Peng Chin-ming (彭進明), head of the air force's operations bureau, told reporters on Tuesday that Taiwan was ready to take delivery of the AMRAAMs and confirmed the Chinese test of its Russian equivalent.
Steuck, the Pentagon spokesman, declined comment on the reported Chinese test-firing, citing a policy of not discussing intelligence matters. Asked about the release of the AMRAAM to Taiwan, he referred a caller to the State Department, which oversees government-to-government US military sales.
The State Department had no immediate comment, said a spokesman, Frederick Jones.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater