TAIPEI (Reuters) – It’s as much as america to resolve what to do with Taiwan’s decommissioned HAWK anti-aircraft missiles, the island’s Defence Minister Wellington Koo mentioned on Wednesday, when requested if they might be transferred to Ukraine.
America and its allies have supplied billions of {dollars} of weapons to Ukraine since Russia attacked the nation two years in the past in what Moscow calls a “particular army operation”.
That has included weapons being phased out by some Western nations, like F-16 fighter jets from the Netherlands.
Koo, talking to reporter at parliament and responding to a query on whether or not Taiwan’s decades-old HAWK missiles might go to Ukraine, mentioned Taiwan now not wanted the weapons and their decommissioning was being dealt with in accordance with rules.
“If the U.S. aspect requests that we switch them again to them, we are going to achieve this in accordance with the related rules and return them to america, after which america will resolve what to do with them,” he mentioned, with out elaborating.
Taiwan has provided sturdy ethical help to Ukraine for the reason that invasion, seeing parallels with the menace Taipei says it faces from its big neighbour China, which claims the democratically ruled island as its personal territory.
However Taiwan has not made any public bulletins about straight sending weapons to Ukraine.
Taiwan is within the technique of upgrading its personal missile defences, together with a cope with america introduced final month price virtually $2 billion for Nationwide Superior Floor-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) medium-range air defence options that features the superior AMRAAM Prolonged Vary floor to air missiles.
The NASAMS system has been battle examined in Ukraine and represents a major improve in air defence capabilities that america is exporting to Taiwan as demand for the system surges.
The Raytheon MIM-23 HAWK system – a contrived acronym for Homing All of the Means Killer – was designed within the depths of the Chilly Battle to shoot down enemy bombers. It was refined and upgraded within the a long time since then, together with variants by consumer nations similar to Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, based on U.S. army paperwork.
Though the U.S. army now not makes use of it, and the HAWK is taken into account much less succesful than extra trendy air defence methods, the latest variants are able to hitting targets at altitudes as little as 60 metres – a helpful trait towards the barrages of small, sluggish one-way assault drones Ukraine has confronted.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Yimou Lee; Extra reporting by Gerry Doyle; Modifying by Lincoln Feast.)