Taipei, Dec. 8 (CNA) The Navy's fleet of Chengkung-class frigates will be one of the service's key weapons if they are armed with U.S.-made Harpoon missiles, the Navy said Friday.
In an attempt to defend its decision to replace the locally-made Hsiung-II missiles on its Chengkung frigates with Harpoons, the Navy said in a news briefing Friday that Harpoons are standard equipment aboard the U.S. Perry-class frigate, on which the Chengkung vessel is patterned.
With a range of 110 miles and the capability of skimming over the sea at supersonic speed, the Harpoon is a more powerful weapon than the Hsiung-II for the 3000-ton Perry frigate, said the Navy.
The Hsiung-II missile will instead be used by the Navy's Chinchiang-class gunboat, which has a displacement of 500 tons, said the Navy.
The Navy is trying to seek the legislature's support for the NT$600 million (US$18.18 million) budget earmarked for the purchase of the Harpoons from the United States.
Revelations of the formerly secret budget caused an outcry at the Legislative Yuan Thursday, because the General Staff Headquarters (GSH) had not yet approved the purchase of the Harpoons.
Angry legislators accused the Navy of trying to muddle through with an unauthorized arms purchase.
The Navy's Vice General Staff Lei Kuan-shui explained at a press briefing Friday that Washington had refused to sell Harpoons to Taipei when it agreed to allow Taiwan to build eight frigates based on the model of the Perry-class vessel in the early 1990s.
As a consequence, Taiwan was forced to make do by installing its home-made Hsiung-II missile on the frigates, of which seven are now in service.
However, Washington reversed its decision and granted Taipei's request for Harpoon purchases in September, after Beijing took delivery of its second Russia-made Sovremenny-class destroyer -- which could tilt the military balance across the Taiwan Strait.
Grasping at the long-awaited chance, the Navy cut normal procurement procedures and added the down payment of NT$600 million for the NT$1.1 billion deal to its budget. But the proposal was rejected by the General Staff Headquarters on the grounds that standard procedures were not followed.
Lei admitted that the NT$600 million set aside for the purchase was not stricken from the Navy's budget, which was compiled before the GSH rejection. He added that the funds would not be available for use even if the request passed through the legislature without being detected.
He apologized for the negligence, but vociferously defended the Navy's decision to buy Harpoon missiles.
Given the fact that it would take 18 months to deploy the missile, Lei appealed for the legislature's support for the purchase, which will be added to the Navy's revised 2000 budget according to established procedures and resubmitted for approval later.
Any delay acquiring the missiles would compromise the Navy's capability to counter Beijing's naval might after 2004, warned Lei. (By Maubo Chang)
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