[quote]U.S. to Sell Long-Range Radar Gear to Taiwan
Wed Mar 31, 2:28 PM ET
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Wednesday it planned to sell Taiwan long-range “early warning” radar equipment worth as much as $1.78 billion, a deal bound to anger China at a tense time in cross-straits relations.
The planned sale “will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security and defensive capability of the recipient, which has been and continues to be an important force for economic progress in the Far East,” the Pentagon’s Defense Security and Cooperation Agency said in a statement.
The radars will boost Taiwan’s ability to “identify and detect ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and air-breathing target threats,” said the statement, sent to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday and made public on Wednesday.
The United States has pledged to help Taiwan defend itself against a Chinese attack. China threatened to intervene after President Chen Shui-bian recently won a second four-year term in an election that faces an opposition challenge.
Shirley Kan, an expert on U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, said the announcement followed approval in November by the defense committee of Taiwan’s parliament of funding for the ultra High Frequency long-range radars.[/quote]
I’m wondering how long it will take for this sale to go through. It seems that during the past few years, Taiwan has hesitated to buy a lot of things the US has offered because of price. They are slow to develop a consensus that the money needs to be spent. I’m also left wondering how long they’ll use such a radar system before it rusts and falls apart from lack of maintainence.
Hopefully funding will go through quickly for this. The Pan-Blue is on the run right now. They can’t been seen as blocking funding for this in the Legislative Yuan. If they do, the pan-Greens will pound them with it going into the Legislative elections and as the Pan-Blues are the majority party in the Legislature, any blocking would give the Pan-Greens yet another weapon against the KMT-PFP alliance.
This is great news and I can’t wait to see Beijing’s reaction.
Why should the Taiwanese invest in their own defense? Just sit back with your plane ticket, foreign bank account and have the Americans do it. And the Taiwanese [b]never[/b] scrimp when it’s time to buy a bottle of French wine or designer handbags.
According to the article this item has specifically been requested by the legislature defense commitee. I believe that was not the case for some of the items offered by the US.
How long is a piece of string?
Taiwan has yet to even pay for the stuff that the US said it would sell it in its last and largest arms package. The deal was made exactly three years ago and included four older, Kidd-class destroyers, eight diesel-powered submarines (hahaha!), sub-hunting aircraft, advanced torpedoes and missiles.
Don’t ask me why Taiwan is still cutting bait instead of fishing, but the last story I saw some months ago seemed to indicate that the US wanted payment in one lump sum, which was a problem (for some reason) for the military.
USA knows it can squeeze money out of ROC.
As if it will make a squat of difference.
I spoken to many people in the ROC military. If PRC decides to fully engage the ROC in a military confrontation in the near future, you can just save up your NT Dollars as toilet paper.
The reason is that the Taiwan military budget is small. All the replacement and maintaince parts still need to be purchased from the USA. Add on a new radar system or a kidd destroy, forget it, you would have to stop paying the soldiers (even if they are already making slave wages).
Good know the DDP government has domestic economy as a top priority right now. They so hard up on IT that they forgot about the economy stupid.
They might even need to impose an income tax on ROC run PRC factories to afford the stuff USA wants to sell…God forbid.
Your propaganda is astonishingly crude, ac_dropout. It still needs an awful lot of work before it might have a chance of influencing any but the most die-hard pro-blue simpletons, who hardly need propagandizing as they’re already fully won over to your cause.
Well you know once the DDP removed the thing called stupidity and racism from my mind it gave me so much more room to contemplate other things.
I like going to my Hakka and aboriginal brothers and telling you are now DaWanLan now. Tiangabo…smack smack. You are Taiwanese. If your not Taiwanese I’ll shot myself. Makes me want to laugh.
I like how the entire presidential election was 99% about ethnic identity. .0001 percent about the economy. I like the fact how 1 million voter flew back and tossed a ballot only to fly back to the PRC to make a living.
Of course the DDP has the answers to ROC problems. Of course the USA still likes ROC. I wish Chaney would stop by here and tell us what our future was. But he’s like talking to PRC about our future. Maybe Pres. Chen can get himself onto Bush’s ranch in Texas to talk about ROC future. Bush seems to like the Republic of Taiwan.
Didn’t Bush try to sell us arms 3 years ago. I wonder where all the money went. I think they are trying to outsource the sub building to PRC to save on the cost.
And the Taiwanese