The military is to send a delegation to the US to witness a test-firing of the Patriot PAC-3 missile this month at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, defense sources said yesterday.
The delegation is composed of senior officials from the armaments bureau and department of resources under the Ministry of National Defense (MND) as well as the army's missile command.
Deputy defense minister for armaments General Chen Chao-ming (
The anti-missile system has been deployed by the US Army and was used in combat in the war against Iraq last year.
It is one of the major weapon systems that the military will buy in the next few years.
A defense source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the test-firing is being specially held for potential buyers of the anti-missile system.
"A total of four countries have been invited for the occasion. They include Taiwan, Japan, Germany and Netherlands," the source said.
"In the test-firing, the PAC-3 is to intercept a Patriot PAC-2 acting as the target. The PAC-3 will demonstrate its highly accurate hit-to-kill capabilities," he said.
The PAC-2 and PAC-3 are different missile interceptors, but share the same designation of "Patriot." They were developed by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin respectively.
A senior official with Lockheed Martin in Taiwan, who declined to be identified, said he has heard about the military's plan to witness the upcoming PAC-3 test-firing, but he is not in a position to confirm it.
The test-firing will be conducted by the US Army on Thursday at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, sources said.
The military has been keeping a low profile about the matter since the planned purchase of the PAC-3 has become a political issue because of its associations with the referendum to be held on March 20 together with the presidential election.
One of the referendum questions is about the necessity of upgrading anti-missile systems to defend against the increasing ballistic-missile threat from China.
Due to manipulation of public opinion by the opposition camp, the planned purchase of the PAC-3 has become a very complicated issue.
Over the past two weeks at the legislature, Minister of National Defense Tang Yao-ming (湯曜明) has been bombarded with questions from opposition lawmakers about whether the planned purchase of the PAC-3 system would still go ahead if the result of the referendum indicates that the public is against upgrading defenses.
Tang said that the decision to buy the PAC-3 was based on strategic necessity and that whatever the result of the referendum, the military will buy the system.
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
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
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