Lockheed Martin and the Taiwanese government-owned Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation last week inked an agreement to cooperatively upgrade Taiwan’s F-16A/B fighter fleet, announced AIDC. “We are confident this collaboration effort will position both of our companies to better support our Taiwan customer,” said Roderick McLean, Lockheed Martin’s F-16 vice president, in AIDC’s July 12 release. The two companies, which formalized their collaboration at the Farnborough Air Show outside London on July 11, will upgrade Taiwan’s F-16s with active electronically scanned array radars, modern air-to-air missiles, and structural improvements to extend their service lives. The United States last fall granted Taiwan a $5.3 billion foreign military sale for these upgrades. In its version of the Fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill, the House also supported a proposal to sell Taiwan 66 new build F-16C/Ds, something to which the Obama Administration has not yet committed.
President Donald Trump projected confidence Nov. 19 that a proposed sale of F-35s to Saudi Arabia will sail through the Foreign Military Sales process, an early test of the Pentagon’s acquisition reforms. The deal is also likely to face scrutiny from ally Israel over how it could affect the balance…
