The Ministry of National Defense is sending military personnel to the US next year to ensure that the delivery of the FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missiles it has procured would be on schedule.
The ministry initially planned to spend NT$17 billion (US$531.4 million) to procure 500 Stinger missiles from the US from 2017 to next year to bolster the military’s air defense capabilities. It later purchased an additional 1,985 missiles in the wake of growing military threats from China.
The additional procurement would increase the budget to about NT$69 billion.
Photo: Military News Agency via AP
The ministry’s budget proposal, which has been submitted to the Legislative Yuan, showed that the first batch of 500 Stingers should be delivered by the end of next year.
The additional 1,985 Stinger missiles should be delivered by 2031, the ministry said.
The ministry also said that the army would dispatch representatives to the US to control the progression and budgeting of its various contracts and to ensure that military equipment would be delivered on time and meet certain quality standards.
The representatives would function as liaison, the ministry said.
The army and the navy would dispatch representatives to the US to participate in a meeting on technical issues involved in the use of Stinger missiles, it said.
The portable air-defense system, with an effective shooting range of about 4,800m, would enable troops to have high mobility. Once procured, it would be used by the army, the marines, military police and troops stationed on Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島) and Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島).
Meanwhile, the army is to allocate NT$8.36 million to the Armaments Bureau from next year to 2028 to build new 150mm cannon barrels which would be added to M60A3 tanks, to procure 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks and to build new Clouded Leopard armored vehicles, the ministry’s budget proposal showed.
The nation has 460 M60A3 tanks that have been in active duty since the 1990s.
Aside from building new cannon barrels, the ministry in 2022 tasked the National Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology to upgrade the tanks’ gun control, firing control and sighting systems. The project cost NT$444.01 million.
It has also budgeted about NT$7.2 billion to purchase “AVDS-1790-8CR” engines and replace old ones installed on M60A3 tanks. The procurement is to be completed by 2028.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS