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Mass production of Clouded Leopard armored vehicles scheduled

ROC Central News Agency

2010/03/15 19:52:39

Taipei, March 15, (CNA) Taiwan will begin mass production of locally developed CM-32 Clouded Leopard armored vehicles in November, a Ministry of National Defense (MND) official said Monday.

Fielding questions at a legislative session, the official said that production of the vehicles is expected to begin soon, once various "technical problems" involving cracks in the chassis in several of the first batch of 14 have been solved.

According to reports, Taiwan will produce over 650 of the vehicles at a cost of NT$58.1 billion, to replace its aging fleet of M-113 and V-150 armored vehicles.

The wight-wheeled Clouded Leopard, which has a crew of either nine or 10, is seven meters long and weighs 22 tons. It can be configured for various types of service in the army. The official said that the main developers of the vehicles -- the Ordnance Readiness Development Center and the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology -- both of which are under the MND's Armaments Bureau -- are collaborating well with other related institutes to address the technical problems. (By Lee Ming-tsung and Bear Lee) ENDITEM/J