TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Taiwan and the United States have signed two contracts for the long-term deployment of American technicians to the island to complete the modernization of F-16 fighter jets. This is reported by the newspaper Liberty Times.
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By the end of this year, the United States must complete a program to upgrade 140 of the Taiwan Air Force’s F-16A/B fighters to the more advanced F-16V Viper with an updated onboard computer, active phased array radar, and more. advanced avionics, according to journalists.
Under the terms of the latest two contracts, to ensure the completion of the fighter modernization program by the end of 2023, US technicians can be stationed at Taiwan’s Rende Air Force Base in Tainan. The implementation of the program with a total cost of $3.47 billion began in 2017. By the end of December last year, about 100 of the 140 fighters had been upgraded to the F-16V modification.
The newspaper also draws attention to the delay in the delivery of 56 tactical planning bombs AGM-154 from the United States. In 2017, an agreement was signed for the supply of this type of aviation ammunition worth 185.5 million dollars.
The US is the main arms supplier to Taiwan. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the total amount of such supplies in several years has exceeded 70 billion dollars.
As BulgarianMilitary.com reported on January 12, 2023, Taiwan has a plan to gradually increase the combat capability of its air fleet from F-16s by 2027. The Air Force explained that this was based on the national military’s strategic concept of “solid defense, multiple levels of deterrence” and the concept of “joint air control” in the national defense report.
Facing the powerful military threat of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] and the development of future war patterns, Taiwan plans to purchase long-range precision weapons that can effectively paralyze higher-threat targets and weaken the enemy’s air defense capabilities. In this way, Taiwan will facilitate the subsequent combat use and combat effectiveness of the main fighters.
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