Taiwan´s ROCAF wants to buy 66 F-16C/D Block 52

Vice Admiral Kao Kuang-chi unveiled the the 2006 National Defense Report on 29 August 06 but had no word about new fighters. Soon afterwards though the cat was out of the bag: ROCAF had budgeted more than 100 billion NT$ (3.1 billion $) for 66 F 16 Block 52 in the coming FY 2007/08.

The defense draft bill for 07/08 called for 323.5 bn NT$ a rise of 28.1 %. Additionally old plans for 8 SSK (the famous yellow paper subs), 12 P-3C and 6 batteries of PAC 3 Patriots are reaffirmed. (These goodies all for cheapo 10.8 bn $)

Apart from reasoning that Admiral Kao obviously thinks like ´Alice in Wonderland´ that only fiction is larger than life the question remains who will pay the bill for all that stuff. Will legislative Yuan lawmakers really burn billions of taxpayers hard earned money for the sake of Lockheed´s and Boeing´s profits ?? Do Taiwan´s generals the well paid bidding of US defense corporations or do they really believe that 66 additional F-16 save the republic? :roll:

Hopefully GMD representatives block this product of degenerates and take care for the real problems of the taiwanese people like jobs, medical care, social security and a normalized and mutual beneficial relationship with the mainland.

I think more F-16s would be useful for Taiwan but unecessary, especially because they don't have enough missles for their planes. The PAC-3s and the subs are much more necessasary. That's cheaper, and those are needed much more by Taiwan anyway. I've said this before-Taiwan would be best served by producing massive amounts of small, cheap missle attack boats, to overwhelm a PLAN attack fleet with missles. If Taiwan can take out a lot ships prior to landing or just after, then the invasion is essentially dead in the water-China cannot achieve the necessary 3-1 attack ratio in men and supplies. It doesn't matter if the attack boats survive after they fire their missles (sucks for the crew but they got lifeboats )

Violet Oboe said:

Apart from reasoning that Admiral Kao obviously thinks like ´Alice in Wonderland´ that only fiction is larger than life the question remains who will pay the bill for all that stuff. Will legislative Yuan lawmakers really burn billions of taxpayers hard earned money for the sake of Lockheed´s and Boeing´s profits ?? Do Taiwan´s generals the well paid bidding of US defense corporations or do they really believe that 66 additional F-16 save the republic? :roll:

Hopefully GMD representatives block this product of degenerates and take care for the real problems of the taiwanese people like jobs, medical care, social security and a normalized and mutual beneficial relationship with the mainland.

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According to that logic NO country in the world should ever spend money on stuff designed only to increase human suffering. I like that. Of course you might not think China should follow the same rule, but whatever.

My interpretation of what you said (at least part of it) was Taiwan should only be spending money on issues that can help its people. Obviously that's the best situation for the citizens, but it's not going to happen as long as the threat of military invasion is looming over their heads, hence helping create a semi-arms race that Taiwan can't possibly match without important services getting the short end of the stick. But yeah. It's chicken and egg. If China didn't keep threatening to invade, Taiwan wouldn't have to get weapons. (Who else is hostile in the area?) If Taiwan didn't keep "Delaying the inevitable, righteous, and glorious re-unification with the great Motherland then China wouldn't have to resort to tough love". It goes on and on... Not the place for it, so I'll shut up now. Suffice to say my views about this differ from yours.

Personally I have somewhat mixed reactions to this. It's actually a pretty old story, at least on the Taiwan Military forums. On one hand I think that these F-16s would be a good replacement for the F-5s being slowly phased out. On the other hand, frankly speaking I think they're just going to be more target practice for Chinese fighters if the shooting ever gets started. Taiwan doesn't have enough live fire exercises especially with the weapons most important to them in an air battle (namely AMRAAMs, courtesy of the US disapproval. What the hell is the PLAAF going to learn from watching a video of an AMRAAM being fired? It's like fighting with one arm tied behind your back.) so basically the pilots don't have enough realistic training, and that's always a bad thing.

I mean, for real. Taiwan's got ~150 F-16s currently, excluding the upcoming deal for Block 52s, and only 120 AMRAAMs. What kind of idiot buys 150 guns and only 120 bullets? So on one hand I like the F-16s because they're a hell of a lot more capable than the F-5s. On the other hand if the ROCAF's not getting a hell of a lot more missiles then it's all a moot point.

The ROCAF doesn't ahve a large stockpile of AIM-120's, primarily because the US is being conservative with munition sales to East Asia. In comparison, the US had far less reservatives with UAE and sold them 491 AIM-120B's with the F-16 Block 60 purchase.

At $3.1 billion USD, the F-16 block 52 cost $47 million each. Not cheap, but would allow replacement of F-5 E/F's that were decommissioned last year (8th Fighter Group at Taoyuan AFB). The US will prolly sell another batch of munitions including AIM-120's with this purchase.

The ROCN is in desperate need of replacement ASW aircraft. They're still flying S-2 Trackers that have been retired from from most other nations. I think the P-3C is needed even more than the new F-16's at this point.

According to a report mentioned by oringo in the Taiwan budget thread, there is a modest supply of extra missiles with this package - around 120.



Anyway, would these planes help? Yes. The qualities of the IDF is disputed, the F-5s certainly need to be replaced. Taiwan will have to wait quite some time until it can get the next generation of US aircraft (i.e. JSF), so it needs to get replacements while it can.

However, guys, the money for the P-3 Orions is already in the new budget, so the fighter purchase would be able to go ahead too, provided it's passed. I would agree that the purchase of the P-3s is highly important.

120 won't go far.

So basically they're going to have 216 fighters and 240 to 320 missiles for them? It seems like they haven't made any real improvements at all. Especially with PL-12 in service. China's gonna crank out way more than 320 PL-12s.

China gets 100 Adders with every Su-30MKK batch of 24. With the Mirage-2000s, which they only have 50 or 70 of I think, they got 400 MICAs.

At least, they'll have better fighters.

Vlad Plasmius said:

120 won't go far.

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Sure, but it would be an improvement over having less missiles than jets, which is the current situation - if one ignores the stockpile of older/short-range ones.

EDIT: Vlad (below), yes, I know. Which is why it would be good to actually be in a position where there were more AIM-120s than F-16s for once.

The problem is Taiwan's short-range missiles fall short of PL-8, PL-9, and R-73. AIM-7 technology, on the other, hand has been in CHina longer than in Taiwan. At the very least they know its weaknesses.

According to the same source, Taiwanese DoD originally wanted more AIM-120. But the Taiwanese congress thinks the whole deal is too expensive, so they asked the US Government to lower the price on the airplanes. In the end, the US government did lower the price of the whole deal, but also took a significant amount of AIM-120 off the PO. So Taiwan got a neutered deal again, just like when they bought the first batch of F-16's.

The ROCAF does have a large supply of AIM-7M missiles, which performed okay during the 1991 Gulf War, and offers BVR option. The PLAAF, of course, have access to the same missile via Italian Aspide exports.