The Ministry of National Defense plans to buy US-made M67 grenades worth NT$1.03 billion (US$32.3 million) over the next years as the military expands and tensions with China increase, the ministry’s budget showed.
The hand grenade program is to be allocated NT$51.8 million for the next fiscal year, according to the ministry’s budget proposal that was delivered to the Legislative Yuan on Thursday.
According to the US Department of Defense, the average cost of one M67 hand grenade was US$45 in 2021, meaning the ministry’s budget can afford about 730,000 grenades.
Photo courtesy of Military News Agency
The M67 grenades would supplement older Mk 2 grenades that were manufactured under license by the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, the budget showed.
The M67 is a design originating in the Vietnam War that features a more powerful explosive filler, a more reliable fuse and a smooth metal casing that produces deadlier fragments than previous designs.
Meanwhile, based on details of the ministry’s annual budget proposal for the next year, Taiwan is to receive seven of 14 anti-tank munition-laying systems that it had ordered from the US by the end of this year.
Photo: Screen grab from the US Army Reserve Web site
The remaining seven systems would arrive in 2026, it added.
The total budget for the M136 Volcano Vehicle-Launched Scatterable Mine System is about NT$4.89 billion, which is to be allocated through 2029, according to the ministry.
The budget would be slightly more than the NT$4.5 billion deal that Taiwan signed with Washington earlier this year.
The US arms package for Taiwan includes the M136 Volcano, M977A4 HEMTT 10-tonne cargo trucks on which munition-laying systems would be mounted, M87A1 Anti-Tank (AT) munitions, M88 canister training munitions (practice dummy ammunition rounds), and M89 training munitions (test ammunition rounds), according to a US Defense Security Cooperation Agency announcement made in December last year.
Procurement of the vehicle-launched automated mine dispensing systems has sparked concern from opposition parties and academics in Taiwan that they would turn the country into an “island of land mines.”
The Army Command Headquarters said on Friday that the acquisition of munition-laying systems would be crucial for deterrence and it is legal under domestic and international laws.
Mines would be used responsibly to accomplish military objectives while following humanitarian guidelines, the command said, adding that certain media outlets have acted “improperly” by using inflammatory language such as “island of land mines” to slander the military’s efforts to defend the nation.
Additional reporting by Wu Su-wei
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
RSS