Taiwan News, The Taiwanese Air Force will take delivery of two E-2T Hawkeye reconnaissance aircraft in the beginning of 2005, the Ministry of National Defense announced yesterday.
The two turboprop planes, which were ordered from the United States in 1999, will join an existing fleet of four E-2Ts that have been in service for nearly a decade. The planes Taiwan will receive were decommissioned and then refurbished in the United States.
“They will execute all-weather surveillance operations and fulfill our need for early warning to ensure air superiority in the Taiwan Strait,” an MND spokesman said.
Built by Northrop Grumman, the E-2T is a Taiwan version of the E-2C “Hawkeye” in service aboard U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and carries a distinctive radar dome on its back. The planes are said to improve interceptions of enemy aircraft by 35 to 150 percent, compared to ground-based radar systems.
With the addition of the two planes, Taiwan's Air Force will be able to conduct round-the-clock surveillance missions, said military spokesman Huang Suey-sheng.
Major General Liu Jieh-tsen of the Air Force General Headquarters' planning department said a major difference between the new and old models were their propellers. “The new planes are equipped with propellers of eight blades. This will facilitate maintenance because each blade can be removed without dismounting the entire propeller, as we have to do with our existing fleet.”
The two E-2Ts to be delivered next year will also add a cockpit warning system that sounds the alarm with the plane's landing gear is not in a correct position.
An E-2T was damaged on March 20, 1997 in Taiwan because the pilot was unaware that the landing gear below the aircraft's nose had not been lowered.
The new planes will join the existing fleet at the Airborne Early Warning and Electronic Warfare unit in Pingtung.
Announced by the U.S. Department of Defense in July 1999, the US$400 million package to be delivered early next year includes two E-2T Hawkeye 2000E aircraft, two AN/APS-145 radar systems, two T56-A-427 engines, two OE-335/A antenna groups, two Mission Computer Upgrade/Advanced Control Indicator Sets, two Passive Detection System upgrades of software laboratory, and spare parts.
In addition to announcing the delivery of these early-warning planes, the military also continued lobbying yesterday for an NT$610.8 billion arms package that includes eight diesel-powered submarines.
Defense Minister Lee Jye told legislators that Taiwan needed to a acquire a fleet of submarines to prevent China from mounting a naval blockade of the island in the event of a war.
He said that China “would require only 13 submarines to fully blockade Taiwan,” one of the military options tipped to be used by the People's Liberation Army against the island.
The PLA navy now operates a fleet of 86 submarines, 40 of them in the “new generation” category, Lee said.
In contrast, Taiwan navy's submarine fleet consists of two 50-year-old Guppy-class diesel-electric boats, both in very poor condition, and two Dutch-built Zwaardis-class boats commissioned in the late '80s.
But Lee said Taiwan would be able to defend its waters if it went ahead with the purchase of eight submarines from the United States.
The remarks come as Taiwan debates whether to spend NT$610.8 billion on an arms package consisting of eight conventional submarines, 12 P-3C submarine-hunting aircraft and six PAC-3 missile systems.
