The Ministry of National Defense has signed a NT$135 million (US$4.1 million) deal for M67 fragmentation hand grenades with the American Institute in Taiwan, a government procurement notice showed.
According to the notice posted yesterday on the government’s procurement Web site, the deal inked by the Defense Mission to the US on July 19 was a single-source contract being implemented from last month to December 2028.
Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) is listed as the place of the contract’s implementation.
Photo courtesy of the Military News Agency
The ministry has requested that the legislature to authorize a NT$103 million deal for obtaining US-made grenades, it said in this year’s budget proposal.
Local media previously reported that the sum is equivalent to the buying price for 730,000 hand grenades.
The M67 is a design originating in the Vietnam War that features a more powerful explosive filler, a more reliable fuse and a smooth metal casing that produces deadlier fragments than previous designs.
In other news, a military source on Thursday said that precision live-fire missile drills are set to be conducted in southern Taiwan later this month and feature the domestically developed Chien Hsiang loitering munition.
The annual drills are to be held in areas around Jiupeng Base in Pingtung’s Manzhou Township (滿州) from Aug. 20 to 22, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The military is to conduct live-fire exercises with indigenous Hsiung Feng-II and Hsiung Feng-III anti-ship missiles, the Tien-Kung III land-based surface-to-air missile, as well as the US-made Patriot PAC-2 surface-to-air system, the source said.
The exercises would also involve the Chien Hsiang loitering munition developed by the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, the source said, adding that the institute has already delivered two variants of the Chien Hsiang.
A loitering munition, also known as a suicide drone, is a kind of aerial weapon with a built-in warhead that is typically designed to loiter around a target area until a target is located, then attack by crashing into it.
During the three-day exercises, coast guard patrol vessels are expected to be equipped with anti- ship missiles to train alongside the navy’s warships, the source said.
According to a notice released by the Maritime and Port Bureau, the areas that are to be affected would include Taitung and Pingtung counties, as well as Green Island (綠島), Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and the Hengchun Peninsula.
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