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Military equipment firms from the United States led the charge at an exhibition which opened here Thursday to get a slice of the multi-billion-dollar arms spending spree Taiwan is set to embark on over the next decade. The aerospace and technology exhibition which kicked off in the capital Taipei gave local arms manufacturers and US and other foreign firms a chance to show off their latest gadgets. Taiwan's leading military equipment research body, Chung-shan Institute of Science and Technology, wowed audiences with weapons like Hsiungfeng ship-to-ship missiles and Tienchien II air-to-air missiles. Several complex flight simulators developed by Chung-shan researchers could prove popular with the Taiwanese military. "Since 1997 the Unit Training Device (UTD) has enabled the air force to step up training for their pilots at an extremely low cost," a Chung-shan official told AFP. The cost of each pilot flying the locally made Indigenous Defensive Fighter (IDF) plane is estimated at 700,000 Taiwan dollars (20,350 US) per hour, but the simulator costs less than 10,000 Taiwan dollars for an IDF pilot to operate for an hour, the official said. Also on display at the show were the Th-67 helicopter simulator, F5E Unit Training Device, Night Vision Training System and M60A3 Gunner/Driver Simulator, all developed by the institute. Among the brand-name arms makers participating in the exhibit were Ratheon, Boeing, Rolls Royce, Dassault Aviation, Lockheed Martin, Bell Helicopter, Northrop Grumman, Rockwell Collins and Pratt et Whitney. "We understand that Taiwan's military procurement will soar to 700 billion Taiwan dollars in the course of the next decade," said Y.C. Chao, president of Taiwan's China External Trade Development Council (CETRA) which is the co-organizer of the four-day show. "Seldom in aviation industry has an aviation show progressed to benefit so many," he said. Taiwan is set to speed up a 10-year arms buying spree worth 700 billion Taiwan dollars (20.33 billion US dollars) as the island attempts to rival China's military modernization efforts. But despite the large turnout for the exhibition, analysts said the bulk of Taiwan's weapons procurement contracts would likely be awarded to the United States, as in previous years. Politically, only the United States can shrug off Beijing's protests and arm Taiwan, which China regards as part of its territory, the analysts said. Washington has remained the leading arms supplier to Taiwan despite its switching of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. On the Taiwan military's shopping list are eight conventional submarines, long-range early warning radar systems and Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile systems. Against this backdrop, it was unsurprising that Ratheon Co. of the United States had a prominent place at the exhibition. "Taipei Aerospace Technology Exhibition 2003 is a good venue to present our capabilities," said Susan Baumgarten, president of Raytheon International. Featured in the Ratheon exhibit were the company's air and missile defence systems, notably Patriot, the latest versions of strike and missile systems, including Maverick, Stinger, TOW-2A and TOW-2B and Early Warning Radar. Taiwan has deployed three batteries of PAC-2 Plus anti-missile weaponry to defend the populous Greater Taipei area, but Taiwanese government has decided to add more advanced PAC-3 to its arms inventory. In a report released this month, the Pentagon warned that China's most immediate threat to Taiwan is a force of 450 short-range ballistic missiles in the Nanjing Military Region across the Taiwan straits from Taipei. China has repeatedly threaten to invade Taiwan should the island declare formal independence from the mainland, prompting Taiwan to seek more advanced weapons. All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. Quick Links
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