The Ministry of National Defense (MND) on Wednesday said it would gradually reduce dependence on the US for the maintenance of its Patriot missiles in order to cut costs and improve efficiency.
The military plans to gradually move toward domestic maintenance of its Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC) missiles, as it did with its Hawk missile components, Minister of National Defense Kao Hua-chu (高華柱) said at a legislative hearing on the country’s defense budget.
He said that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US, Washington has strengthened its homeland security, which makes it troublesome to ship weapons back to Taiwan after maintenance.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The minister was responding to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方), who noted that NT$230 million (US$7.85 million) had been allocated this year to send Taiwan’s aging PAC missiles to the US for maintenance.
Lin said some components of the PAC missile system would soon reach the end of their 15-year life cycle and he suggested that the ministry look into doing some of the maintenance on the missiles at home to reduce costs.
The lawmaker also raised the issue of the Sparrow missiles which misfired during a military exercise last year.
The US Air Force has asked Taiwan to stop using Sparrow missiles in live-fire military exercises since the solid-propellant rocket motors have reached the end of their life cycle, Lin said.
In response, Lieutenant General Chen Tien-sheng (陳添勝) said the ministry would make a decision based on a report being prepared by the US authorities, which is expected to be released in January after they complete their evaluation of Taiwan’s nearly 500 Sparrow missiles.
Kao said the military would use its surface-to-air Standard Missile-2 in a live-fire exercise scheduled for the second half of next year.
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