Lawmaker and ex-navy chief Nelson Ku (
The market price for the SM-II missile is NT$14 million apiece, but the navy plans to pay over NT$40 million for each missile, Ku said.
Ku said the SM-II missile will be more expensive because the US does not want to sell any such missiles from its own inventory and will have to re-open production lines to make the missile for Taiwan.
Ku questioned whether the arrangement is a good one since a stockpiled missile is as good as a newly-produced one.
"Because of the decision, the navy will spend a total of NT$13 billion on 248 SM-II missiles that will be deployed on the four Kidd-class destroyers that will be bought from the US," he said.
Ku made the remarks yesterday at a meeting of the legislature's Defense Committee as part of his questioning of the Ministry of National Defense.
In response, deputy defense minister for administrative affairs Kang Ning-hsiang (康寧祥), who was the highest-ranking defense official to attend yesterday's defense committee meeting, said he accepted Ku's criticism.
Kang asked for understanding from Ku. "The best solution is to have lawmakers with the defense committee meet with defense officials responsible for arms purchase to discuss issues such as the cost of a single arms deal," Kang said. He wished such open discussions of arms-purchase affairs could start as soon as next year, but he said it would not be possible this year.
In addition to the SM-II missile, Ku also warned that if the navy insists on buying the four Kidds, it will be faced with a situation where there won't be sufficient spare parts for the ships.
"The US no longer produces spare parts for the Kidds. They have to restart production to supply us with new ones. It will cost a lot of money," Ku said.
"I fear that some arms dealers might start to stock spare parts for the Kidds so as to monopolize the business. The navy will have no choice but to turn to these arms dealers for an immediate supply of spare parts for the destroyers," he said. "If so, the navy will also have to spend a lot of money on spare parts."
Ku strongly questioned the figure that the navy gave for the projected annual expenditure for repair and maintenance of the four Kidds.
The navy estimates that it will spend only NT$1.6 billion in repair and maintenance costs for the four Kidds each year.
With his past experience in the navy, Ku said the navy will have to spend much more than it currently estimates.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS