The military plans to purchase 48,000 new boron carbide bullet-resistant ceramic plates, the Ministry of National Defense’s latest list of regulated military material showed.
Mass production of the plates is scheduled for between 2028 and 2029, according to the document that was released last week.
The plates are capable of protecting against up to 7.62mm armor-piercing ammunition or shrapnel.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The budget is set at NT$840 million (US$28.08 million) for the 48,000 sets of plates in 2028 and 2029, the document showed, after an initial procurement of 30 units for NT$1.395 million.
The list does not indicate the plates’ protective rating, but the specifications for NIJ IV-level body armor — resisting a .30 caliber M2 armor-piercing round — are similar to that of the new armor.
Details on the protective rating, weight and which branches of the military are to adopt the armor are not yet public knowledge.
The current NIJ III-rated plates in use by the armed forces are designed to stop standard 7.62mm by 51mm NATO ammunition, the ministry said.
Armor plates that entered mass production this year have three layers of ceramic materials and polyethylene fibers, with 60,000 expected to be mass-produced and delivered to the military this year.
To protect against the 5.8mm steel-core rounds used by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, as well as ordinary 7.62mm bullets, they were developed according to the Enhanced Small Arms Protective Insert specifications used by the US military, the ministry said.
The ministry in February signed a NT$1.6 billion contract to purchase 160,000 ceramic plates.
The ministry’s list of controlled materials includes both the body armor and the research used to develop them.
Boron carbide is among the hardest known materials, and is also lightweight, making it ideal for protective applications.
The export control military use list outlines items subject to export authorization due to their potential applications in national defense. Since 2021, the ministry has released the list annually in accordance with the National Defense Industry Development Act (國防產業發展條例).
Additional reporting by CNA
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to start construction of its 1.4-nanometer chip manufacturing facilities at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP, 中部科學園區) as early as October, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday, citing the park administration. TSMC acquired land for the second phase of the park’s expansion in Taichung in June. Large cement, construction and facility engineering companies in central Taiwan have reportedly been receiving bids for TSMC-related projects, the report said. Supply-chain firms estimated that the business opportunities for engineering, equipment and materials supply, and back-end packaging and testing could reach as high as
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
Democratic nations should refrain from attending China’s upcoming large-scale military parade, which Beijing could use to sow discord among democracies, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) said. China is scheduled to stage the parade on Wednesday next week to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. The event is expected to mobilize tens of thousands of participants and prominently showcase China’s military hardware. Speaking at a symposium in Taichung on Thursday, Shen said that Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) recently met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to New Delhi.