The launch of the nation’s first domestically built amphibious transport dock marks a milestone in Taiwan’s shipbuilding history and would significantly boost the navy’s capabilities, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday at a launch ceremony in Kaohsiung.
Tsai said that the amphibious transport dock, named Yu Shan (玉山) after the nation’s highest peak, is the navy’s first in the 10,000-tonne category.
With its imminent deployment, the nation’s defense capabilities would be boosted, as the navy’s operations would be enhanced, she said at the ceremony at the Kaohsiung shipyard of shipbuilder CSBC Corp, Taiwan (台灣國際造船).
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA-EFE
CSBC in April 2018 won a bid to build an amphibious transport dock prototype at a cost of NT$4.6 billion (US$161.6 million).
The prototype is expected to go into service in the first half of next year, replacing the navy’s only amphibious transport dock, the ROCS Hsu Hai, which has been in service for 50 years and was formerly named the USS Pensacola.
The new ship is to be used to support amphibious operations and transport missions, while also serving as a hospital ship on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions in peacetime.
Photo: Chiang Ying-ying, AP
Military sources said that it is to be fitted with an MK-75 76mm gun, two MK-15 Phalanx close-in weapons systems, and two Tien Chien-2N radar guided surface-to-air missiles.
It is able to support various landing craft, assault amphibious vehicles and two helicopters, and has a maximum load of 673 people, the sources said.
CSBC chairman Cheng Wen-lon (鄭文隆) said that the vessel is 153m long and 23m wide.
Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a senior analyst at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that the navy had been using the decommissioned US-made amphibious transport dock, but because of its age, the maintenance costs were high, so the nation decided to build its own amphibious transport dock.
The launch was part of the nation’s ongoing efforts to expand its indigenous defense capacity by building its own aircraft, ships and submarines, an initiative that began when Tsai took office in May 2016.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS