Taiwan plans to upgrade its F-16 and Mirage warplanes while waiting to introduce its third-generation fighter jets, a local newspaper said yesterday.
The Chinese-language China Times, quoting an unnamed air force source, said that Taiwan still hopes to buy JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) jets from the US, although it may take the government many years to get Washington to approve the purchase.
"The US has rejected Taiwan's request to participate in the four-stage development of JSF. So after JSF is launched and if the US approves the sale, Lockheed-Martin will not sell JSF until it has delivered the jets to the US and Japanese air forces. That means Taiwan won't be able to get JSF until after 2020," the China Times said.
The government has ruled out seeking to buy F-15s as its third-generation jets, the paper said. For the period until the introduction of its third-generation jets, Taiwan will rely on F-16s and Mirage 2000-5s.
The air force ordered 150 F-16 C/Ds and 60 Mirage 2000-5s in 1992 to form its second-generation fleet, which also includes 130 self-developed Indigenous Defense Fighter (IDF) jets.
Under the current plan, the China Times said, IDFs will cease to be used as fighter jets switching to a training role.
The airforce will seek to upgrade its F-16s and Mirages.
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:
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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