The Ministry of National Defense is to allocate an estimated NT$10.6 billion (US$341.33 million) for a domestic submarine program, its budget report for next year said.
The navy has asked for NT$9.75 billion to continue building a prototype submarine, the construction of which began this year, the report said, adding that the navy intends to complete the vessel before the end of 2025.
Another NT$819.1 million was requested by the navy to to finalize the design contract of the submarine, which is to pay for the development of combat systems and the platform, and for laying the groundwork of the design details, it said.
The navy is to send a delegation of six people to the US and six more to Europe, where they are to inspect contractors’ ability to manufacture articles to specification and deliver them on time, the report said.
The US-bound team has eight days for their task and the Europe-bound team 11 days, with a total budget of NT$1.8 million, it said.
The military has been tight-lipped about the companies that were awarded contracts for the submarine program. Last year, then-navy chief of staff Vice Admiral Lee Tsung-hsiao (李宗孝) told lawmakers that 15 companies in the US and Europe had expressed an interest in bidding.
In March, the military furnished technology transfer licensing documents to be reviewed by the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee and lawmakers were reportedly satisfied, sources said.
With Washington having approved a slew of arms sales to the nation, the armed forces are to send officers to the US to learn about the weapon systems Taiwan is to procure, the report said.
Military officers are to attend technical conferences with their counterparts and weapons manufacturers, including makers of Stinger portable air defense systems, AIM-X air-to-air missiles, TOW-2B anti-tank guided missiles, F-16V jets and M1A2 Abrams tanks, it said.
Liaison teams are to be established in the US to provide fiscal and technical oversight, and to coordinate systems integration and logistical organization, it said.
Navy and air force representatives are to attend a leadership seminar at the US Naval Academy and next year’s Mobility Guardian exercise held by the US Air Force at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord respectively, it said.
The command sergeant of the General Staff is expected to meet their US counterpart, while the Reserve Command plans to observe the training of army reservists by the US Indo-Pacific Command in September next year, it said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching