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Six Taiwan F-16 fighter jets fly back from Arizona to be upgraded: source

ROC Central News Agency

06/10/2022 10:20 PM

Taipei, June 10 (CNA) Six Taiwanese F-16 fighter jets flew back to Taiwan on Friday from a training mission at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona after a stopover in Honolulu, according to a military source.

The F-16s arrived at Hualien Air Force Base in eastern Taiwan at around 3 p.m., a military official familiar with the matter told CNA.

Five of the six fighter jets were single-seat F-16As, while the other was a twin-seat F-16B and four of the aircraft were piloted by Taiwanese Air Force pilots, the official said.

No further details were given and the Air Force refused to comment publicly on the matter.

According to sources, the six F-16s were among the 10 F-16A/Bs currently being used on a training mission with Luke Air Base's 21st Fighter Squadron, as part of a Taiwan-U.S. training program that began in the 1990s when Taiwan purchased its first batch of the jets from the U.S.

The jets flew back to Taiwan to be upgraded into the more advanced F-16V format as part of a retrofitting project launched by the Air Force in 2016.

The program involves the retrofitting of all 140 of Taiwan's F-16 A/Bs into F-16Vs, which are equipped with more advanced avionics, including APG-83 scalable agile beam radar, a helmet mounted cueing system, and other flight management and electronic warfare systems.

The return of the six fighter jets on Friday came just days after another military source told CNA earlier this week that an F-16 fighter jet belonging to Taiwan's Air Force made a hard landing at an airport in Honolulu due to a landing gear malfunction. No one was injured.

The source confirmed the incident after Hawaii media reported the incident took place at around 2:45 p.m. on Monday, leading the temporary closure of a runway at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport.

In Taipei, the Ministry of National Defense declined to comment on the report, but the source at the time said the jet was returning to Taiwan to be upgraded to an F-16V.

(By Matt Yu, Joseph Yeh and Ko Lin)

Enditem/AW