Two decommissioned Kidd-class US destroyers purchased by the government have departed for Taiwan and will arrive in December, a television station reported yesterday.
A 600-member Taiwanese crew set sail on Saturday with the warships, which were christened Keelung and Suao, from Port Charleston, South Carolina, CTI Cable Station reported.
A launch ceremony was held at the port on Saturday, and some US representatives and South Carolina's Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer attended the elaborate event. This type of event has been rare since Taiwan ended its formal diplomatic relations with the US in 1979.
"The destroyers will boost significantly our air defense and anti-submarine capabilities," Admiral Chen Pang-chih (
Chen made a special trip from Taipei to participate in the launch ceremony.
US Marine General John Allen, the US Department of Defense's principal director for Asia-Pacific Affairs, delivered a speech for the occasion. He said that although US President George W. Bush opposes Taiwan's independence and any unilateral moves by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo, the US is committed to make available defensive arms and defensive services to Taiwan to help it meet its self-defense needs.
The US agreed to sell the government four older Kidd-class destroyers in 2003.
The refurbished destroyers will fill gaps in the navy's fleet air defense and Anti-Submarine Warfare capabilities.
The government purchased four of the 8,000-tonne guided-missile ships in 2001 for US$800 million. They were decommissioned by the US navy in 1998, and are expected to remain in service for another 20 years.
The destroyers will bolster the navy's ability to respond to any Chinese attempt to blockade the island or land an invasion force.
The vessels are equipped with Harpoon missiles, five-inch guns as well as anti-air warfare systems.
Under the provisions of its Taiwan Relations Act, the US pledged to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons systems. That law was passed shortly after Washington transferred diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
Given their large displacement, upon their arrival in Taiwan the two decommissioned Kidd-class US destroyers will be docked temporarily at the Suao harbor's deep-water berth.
The two ships will later be relocated to the Tsoying Naval Base in Kaohsiung City after construction of a new deep water wharf at the base is completed.
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