A shipment of 38 US-made M1A2T Abrams tanks — part of a military procurement package from the US — arrived at the Port of Taipei early yesterday.
The vehicles are the first batch of 108 tanks and other items that then-US president Donald Trump announced for Taiwan in 2019. The Ministry of National Defense at the time allocated NT$40.5 billion (US$1.25 billion) for the purchase.
To accommodate the arrival of the tanks, the port suspended the use of all terminals and storage area machinery from 6pm last night until 7am this morning.
Photo: Reuters
The tanks are expected to be deployed at the army’s training facility in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), where training on the tanks would start after the Lunar New Year holiday, a source said.
The “T” in the M1A2T denotes that the tanks are a special version for Taiwan, they said.
The military is to receive a shipment of 42 Abrams tanks and another of 42 tanks over the next two years, Ministry of National Defense records showed.
Photo: Fang Wei-li, Taipei Times
The Abrams is “decades more advanced than” the combat vehicles the army currently uses, and the tank’s 120mm main gun would enable the military to compete with the main battle tanks used by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the source said.
“The average speed of the new tanks is also twice that of Taiwan’s current tanks, which would enhance the efficiency of troop reinforcements,” they said.
“Furthermore, the Abrams’ aiming capability is more than five times that of Taiwan’s current tanks, and it can maintain a continuous hit rate,” they added.
The M1A2Ts are equipped with a thermal management system that can significantly reduce the leakage of heat from the modern electronic equipment on board, enhancing their concealment on the battlefield, they said.
In an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published on Dec. 6, retired major general Kuo Li-sheng (郭力升) said the M1A2T Abrams tanks would be a generation ahead of Taiwan’s US-made M60A3s and the indigenously developed CM11 tanks, which have designs dating to the 1980s.
“Fielding the M1A2T would not only increase the army’s numerical strength, but would be a qualitative leap forward,” he said, adding that Taiwan has sought to acquire the tanks since the 1990s.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS