Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Taiwan Mulls F-16 Purchase

The media reports that Taiwan is considering purchasing more F-16s to augment its fighter force. Jon Lin over at Taiwan focus points out that the number appears to fit the number of archaic F-5 fighters that will be retired over the same time frame as the purchase.

The acquisition of the advanced model F-16C/D Block 52 fighter jets would be discussed during talks in Washington on May 25-29 between the two countries, the US-based weekly Defense News quoted a US defense source as reporting.

Taiwan's air force consists of 146 less sophisticated F-16A/B fighters, 128 locally produced Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDFs), 56 French-made Mirage 2000-5s and 60 or so aging F-5 Tigers.

"Taiwan needs to modernize its fleet to counter the advanced fighters the PRC (People's Republic of China) is fielding now," the source said.

"Even if Taiwan decides to purchase the aircraft this year, Taiwan won't see the aircraft until 2011-2012 due to paperwork and production timeline. By that time, the IDFs will be close to 20 years old and the F-16A/Bs will be over 15 years old."

Regrettably the US side is making the purchase, something Taiwan desperately needs, contingent on the current arms package.

But a source at F-16 maker Lockheed Martin said formal progress toward a Taiwanese purchase of the fighters would likely have to wait until Taipei decides on a weapons package that the United States proposed for sale in 2001.

Taiwan's opposition parties have blocked the 10-billion-dollar arms purchase bill even though the ruling party has scaled it down from 19 billion dollars.

The bill, proposed by the defense ministry, has yet to win approval by the procedure committee of the opposition-controlled parliament, a necessary step before it can be heard in the full house.

The bill calls for the purchase of eight conventional submarines, 12 P-3C submarine-hunting aircraft, and six PAC-3 Patriot anti-missile systems.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

F-16 will not stand up to this in the future (get the F-22 or F-35)....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GdfnTLKcvM

Stop wasting money on soon to be old junks that will not meet future requirements!!


Buy the 8 submarines now (2 is simply not enough)! China will have plenty of warships include at least one or two aircraft carriers for us to do this in the future....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwPYGUYrwqo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxyMzR9K1Dk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=516Nua56hCA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gZbYxHFBqI


Taiwan's most important goal now is to have a true Navy!!

Iron_Jackal_TW

Anonymous said...

every new child born in Taiwan each day is $170,000 NT in debt. and they still want to waste money buying all that military shit? really?

Anonymous said...

"every new child born in Taiwan each day is $170,000 NT in debt. and they still want to waste money buying all that military shit? really?"

Go fuck yourself good-for-nothing credit card whore! I don't felt sorry for your kind at all. I hoped those high interest rate bury your useless loser arse alive!!

Taiwanese government needs to reform all the state banks to fuck those losers even more (harder) and not less. Another word, privatized all of them and setup a Federal Reserved System.

Do it now green and blue bitches, so all those loser shit bankers that can't fucked these stupid whores are weed out by the strong and truely powerful bankers!!

All loser credit card whores of this world deserved to be slaves and fucked by interest rate! No banks owe these money pits free money. Nada!!

Iron_Jackal_TW

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tek_uL1-PYY

If people in Taiwan had any brain at all or some balls for that matter on getting what we want (but doesn't know it yet), we'll follow the path of India (Su-30 MKI).

Yup, I shit you not! There is nothing like making our very own Super IDF (Su-30 MKT) with Russian airframe and thrust vectoring technology.

Of course, with our best Taiwanese electronic (processor or brain), we'll also include proven-designed Western sensors (radar) and Western armaments (missiles and bombs) to go with them!

It should put many jobs into Taiwanese people's hand, and it would be one hella aircrafts to kick some stupid bitch arsed men all over the place if they come knocking on our doors!!

Iron_Jackal_TW