The Ministry of National Defense on Monday awarded the bid for a government program to build amphibious warships, codenamed the Hung Yun Project (鴻運計畫), to CSBC Corp, Taiwan (台船) who is to produce two vessels for NT$4.6 billion (US$156 million).
According to the ministry’s timetable, the new ships are to officially enter service in 2021.
It would be the first project under the President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) administration’s indigenous shipbuilding program, ministry officials said.
The ship is expected to have great mobility and move at up to 21 knots (39kph) with a cruising range of 7,000 nautical miles (12,964km). It is to carry amphibious landing craft, model 7A1 assault amphibious vehicles, heavy trucks, Humvees and helicopters, the official said.
The ship could operate as a field hospital during peace time and could be used in providing humanitarian aid to foreign nations, the official said.
The ministry plans to acquire 153m-long ships with a displacement of 10,000 tonnes, equipped with 76mm guns, a Phalanx close-in weapon system and the shipborne variant of the Tien Chien II medium-range missile launcher, the ministry said.
The project has been hampered by a lack of interest from bidders, as the ministry originally budgeted only NT$3.7 billion for two vessels, and it was only after it raised the budget in January that the first proposals were received.
The project was conceived in 2008 to replace the navy’s ROCS Chung Cheng, which was refitted from the USS Comstock, a Casa Grande-class dock landing ship commissioned by the US in 1945, but the plan languished for nearly 10 years due to a lack of funding.
The ministry plans to have the ship conduct sea trials by 2020 and begin service with the Taiwanese navy by 2021.
FATAL FIRE: The health department is trying to contact the inspector who visited the site of the illegal nursing home to ask why they did not advise follow-up checks The Taipei City Government yesterday said that a health department inspector last year had visited the site of a long-term care facility in Neihu District (內湖) after receiving a report questioning its status. A fire broke out at the facility on Tuesday afternoon, killing three people. The Taipei Fire Department said that it received a report about a fire on the first floor of a four-story residential building on Kangning Road Sec. 1 at 2:38pm on Tuesday, firefighters arrived at 2:43pm and the fire was put out by 3:07pm. The firefighters found three men in beds and rushed them to hospital for
Taipei City Councilor Wang Hao (王浩) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Monday called for security improvements to the MRT, as fare evasion has increased more than 13-fold on the metropolitan railway system over the past five years. Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has spoken out against fare evasion and other contraventions of MRT regulations, but since he took office in 2015 the number of contraventions has more than doubled, Wang said, adding that there were 537 cases in 2015 compared with 959 last year. A video was posted to YouTube in June showing people how to evade paying a fare,
FEELING MISUNDERSTOOD: Media speculation has fueled confusion about the KMT’s reasons for skipping a Chinese forum and delaying an AIT meeting, party sources said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Sunday said that it is not seeking to improve relations with the US or China at the expense of the other, and that its relations with the countries would be topic-based. The party has faced questions over its foreign policy after it on Monday last week announced its withdrawal from the annual Straits Forum and delayed planned talks with the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). The party has also taken a tough stance on the importation of US meat containing ractopamine, while also lambasting China for increasing its military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait. Following
Yuchi Township (魚池) fishers have appealed to the Nantou County Government for help in dealing with an invasive fish species in Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), where it has devastated the local ecosystem. Fishers at Sun Moon Lake have been using electrofishing in an attempt to eliminate the giant snakehead fish — found in Africa and Southeast Asia — but they have struggled to keep up with the growing population of the species, which breeds during September and October, the county government said on Monday. The county has contacted researchers at National Tsing Hua University, saying it hoped they could come up
RSS