The US signed over two decommissioned Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates to Taiwan last week, which are scheduled to enter the navy’s service by the end of May.
The vessels were signed over on Thursday at a ceremony in Charleston, South Carolina, attended by Commander of the Navy Admiral Huang Shu-kuang (黃曙光), Representative to the US Stanley Kao (高碩泰) and unnamed US officials.
The event was a deliberately low-key affair, purportedly in a bid to avoid provoking diplomatic conflict, particularly with China.
The Ministry of National Defense refused to comment on the transfer, but Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) yesterday confirmed the handover.
The navy dispatched a team of officers to the US to receive training in how to operate the frigates and the vessels would be sailed to Taiwan either jointly or separately, depending on the progress of the training, with both vessels expected to arrive within two months, Tsai said.
“The two frigates have been retrofitted to extend their service lives by about 30 years, making them a highly cost-effective option for the navy,” Tsai said.
The USS Taylor and the USS Gary were in service between 1984 and 2015. They were purchased for a total of about NT$5.5 billion (US$177.21 million) making them substantially cheaper than Taiwan-made Cheng Kung-class frigates — the design of which is based on Perry-class frigates — which cost up to NT$17 billion each.
The US Navy began to deploy Perry-class guided missile frigates in the 1970s and 1980s. The US built 51 of the frigates for its navy and authorized its allies to build them. Eight such frigates have been built in Taiwan.
Despite calls to rename the two vessels after naval heroes, the two frigates have been named the Mingchuan after Qing Dynasty Taiwan governor Liu Ming-chuan (劉銘傳) and the Fengjia after poet Chiu Feng-jia (丘逢甲), who led the resistance against Japan following the Qing Dynasty’s cession of Taiwan to Japan.
In related news, Huang is scheduled to have meetings with high-level US officials, likely from the White House and the Pentagon, although details of the meetings were not revealed, Tsai said.
Huang is the first high-level Taiwanese military official to visit the US following the passage of the US National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, which for the first time included a section on senior military exchanges with Taiwan.
“Huang is not the first and will not be the last high-level official visiting the US…. I believe there will be military exchanges involving higher-level officials in the near future,” including the minister of national defense and the chief of general staff, reflecting closer defense ties between the two nations, Tsai said.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
MIXED SOURCING: While Taiwan is expanding domestic production, it also sources munitions overseas, as some, like M855 rounds, are cheaper than locally made ones Taiwan and the US plan to jointly produce 155mm artillery shells, as the munition is in high demand due to the Ukraine-Russia war and should be useful in Taiwan’s self-defense, Armaments Bureau Director-General Lieutenant General Lin Wen-hsiang (林文祥) told lawmakers in Taipei yesterday. Lin was responding to questions about Taiwan’s partnership with allies in producing munitions at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Given the intense demand for 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and in light of Taiwan’s own defensive needs, Taipei and Washington plan to jointly produce 155mm shells, said Lin,
RSS