The US Department of Defense (DOD) has taken action to make improvements after “unserviceable and poorly packaged” equipment and munitions were sent to Taiwan under the US Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), the department said on Friday.
The PDA is a process under which the US can send equipment and weapons from existing stocks to its allied partners in crisis situations.
In July last year, the administration of US President Joe Biden authorized as much as US$345 million in defense articles and services to be sent to Taiwan under the presidential drawdown.
Photo: Screen grab from US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General’s Web site
“Taiwan is a key security cooperation partner, and the US government is committed to ensuring that equipment delivered to this partner is sufficient for operational use,” department spokesman Pete Nguyen said.
The department would learn from this experience, which was the first of its kind, and “has taken action to improve its PDA process for Taiwan,” Nguyen said.
The response came after the department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) revealed in its report last week that the department had provided shipments of unserviceable and poorly packaged equipment and munitions to Taiwan from November last year to March.
MOLDY BODY ARMOR
“We appreciate the perspective this report brings to a complex and unique issue for a critical security cooperation partner and anticipate the positive impact it will have on the department moving forward,” Nguyen said.
The department in December last year delivered to Taiwan 120 water damaged pallets, which contained wet and moldy body armor, according to personnel from the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the de facto US embassy, the OIG report said.
The pallets remained at Travis Air Force Base for more than three months because the US Army did not begin initiating requests for Special Airlift Assignment Mission flights to Taiwan until December, the OIG said.
Taiwanese authorities had to spend weeks “unpacking, drying and inventorying the wet and moldy equipment,” it said.
REVIEW
In the same month, the Ministry of National Defense issued a letter to the AIT stating that Taiwan received 2.7 million rounds of ammunition from the department, including some that were expired, in a mix of original, loose and incorrect packaging, it said.
“The DOD did not effectively or efficiently implement accountability and quality controls for items delivered to Taiwan,” it said in the report, adding that those actions “inhibit the DOD’s ability to achieve established security cooperation goals and may lead to loss of partner confidence in the United States.”
The ministry on Friday said the shipments of equipment and munitions have been jointly reviewed and handled accordingly by Taiwan and the US, without elaborating.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
RSS