The military is to mount two tank guns purchased from the US on domestically made armored vehicles to aid in the research and development (R&D) of mobile gun systems, sources said on Saturday.
Two sets of M68A2 105mm tank guns are to be mounted on Taiwanese-built CM-32 Clouded Leopards, the sources said.
The official R&D would start next year, and the military hopes to produce two prototypes by 2023, they added.
Photo courtesy of the Military News Agency
A 105mm tank gun is expected to be the main weapon of armored vehicles, with a secondary system to incorporate a 7.62mm coaxial machine gun with a 12.7mm remote-controlled machine gun turret.
Sources in the military said that armored vehicles using 105mm barrels are expected to replace outdated light tanks used by mechanized infantry battalions.
The new vehicles can provide increased mobility and firepower, they said.
However, as the vehicle chassis weighs about 30 to 40 tonnes, R&D would have to find ways to reduce the recoil of the 105mm barrel to 70 percent of equivalent cannons currently used by the military, sources said.
The US government on Dec. 4 last year approved the export of the weapons and is expected to ship them to Taiwan in September after live-fire testing.
The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has requested the equipment provider to include mechanical blueprints and six other technical documents, sources said, adding that the institute in January finalized and signed a Technical Assistance Agreement with the provider.
In addition to plans to produce two prototype vehicles by 2023, the Ministry of National Defense has said it also hopes to develop 105mm armor-piercing rounds.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,