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Lawrence Chung

The Taiwanese air force aims to send 65 officers to the United States for a year for specialised tactical training on F-16V fighter jets.
The island’s defence ministry revealed the plan in a budget proposal to the legislature last week ahead of the expected delivery of its first US-made F-16V Block 70/72 jets this year.
The training aims to expand the pool of instructor pilots for the fourth-generation warplanes, which Taiwan hopes will bolster its combat fleet as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) intensifies cross-strait activities.
The island has also upgraded its 141 F-16A/B Block 20 jets to F-16Vs, to better match the PLA’s fifth-generation J-20 stealth fighters.


The officers will begin their training in January, according to the ministry, which has allocated NT$36.64 million (US$1.2 million) for the activity.
Upon completion of training in December, the officers would serve as instructors in the air force, the ministry said.
The Taiwanese legislature approved funding in 2019 for 66 F-16V Fighting Falcon jets, with full delivery expected by 2026.
The ministry proposal also revealed that 54 air force officers had been sent to the US for tactical training over the past three years. The deployments had not previously been officially announced.
It has earmarked another NT$1.54 million to send five air force officers to the US for F-16 training aimed at familiarising them with the operation and maintenance of MS-110 multispectral airborne reconnaissance pods.
Taiwan signed a contract in 2021 to acquire six American MS-110 systems to improve the reconnaissance ability of its F-16Vs. Valued at NT$9.36 billion, these pods can capture high-resolution images and intelligence over long distances. They are scheduled for delivery by 2029.
Military exchanges between Taiwan and the US were once conducted discreetly to avoid openly provoking Beijing, which consistently warns Washington against official military and diplomatic contact with the island.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. The US, like most countries, does not recognise self-governed Taiwan as an independent state, but is opposed to any attempt to take the island by force and is committed to arming it for defence.


US relations with Taipei grew closer after Donald Trump took office in 2017. At the same time, ties between Washington and Beijing sharply deteriorated, as Trump lifted long-standing internal restrictions on certain official exchanges with Taipei, including meetings between senior officials. This has continued under President Joe Biden, who succeeded Trump in 2021.
In recent years, Taiwan-US military exchanges have become more public, with reports of Taiwanese officers attending military events and training in the US, and American instructors being sent to Taiwan to help train its troops.
Joseph Cella, a former US ambassador to several Pacific islands, told a congressional hearing last week on the Communist Party of China that Taiwanese troops were among overseas forces to have received training in the US state of Michigan.
The US government had not previously confirmed the presence of Taiwanese troops at the Camp Grayling base.
In March, then Taiwanese defence chief Chiu Kuo-cheng confirmed reports that in addition to US military personnel observing the island’s annual Han Kuang war games, US “Green Beret” special forces were also stationed at command centres on Taiwan’s outlying islets of Quemoy, also called Kinmen, and Penghu.
US-Taiwan military exchanges occurred on a “regular basis”, Chiu said, without giving details.
In 2021, Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s leader at the time, acknowledged that US military personnel were stationed on the island, though she said they were “not as many as people thought”.


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