Taiwan has halted a plan to upgrade its self-made Indigenous Defence Fighter (IDF) warplanes so as not to hurt recently improved ties with China, DPA quoted a newspaper as saying Monday. The Liberty Times quoted an unnamed military source as saying that the cabinet has told the Defence Ministry to halt the Hsiang Chan (Wings Spread) Project in 2009. The cabinet said that it will still allocate the 2009 budget of 1 billion Taiwan dollars (32 million US dollars) for the Hsiang Chan Project, but the Air Force should use the money for other purposes. Some military officials are surprised by the cabinet's decision, because in the past the cabinet would only ask the military to revise a budget and has never before canceled a project, the paper said. The Liberty Times quoted military analysts as saying that one reason for the cabinet's action could be to avoid undermining the current Taiwan government's pursuit of improve ties with China. The Hsiang Chan Project covers upgrading the IDF's fire power, increasing its flight hours and allowing it to attack China's radar control systems, runways, fuel depots and amphibious troops. Taiwan began to develop the IDF, a high-altitude interceptor, in 1980, when it was still unable to obtain F-16s from the United States. With the help of defence firm General Dynamics, maker of the F-16, Taiwan has built 130 IDFs. In 1992, Taiwan succeeded in ordering 150 F-16A/Bs from the United States and 60 Mirage 2000-5s from France. The Taiwan Air Force fleet now consists of about 150 F-16s, 60 Mirage 2000-5s and 130 IDFs, as several F-16s and Mirage jets have crashed in recent years while on training flights. The IDFs are more than 20 years old, and the Aerospace Industry Development Corp (AIDC) launched the 7-billion-Taiwan-dollar (226- million-US-dollar) Hsiang Chan Project to upgrade the fighters. On March 29, 2007, AIDC unveiled the first two uprated IDFs to former president Chen Shui-bian, who dubbed them Hsiung Ying (Brave Eagle) Warplane. Taiwan and China were split in 1949 when the Republic of China government lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to Taiwan to set up its government-in-exile. Since then, Taiwanese have lived in fear of invasion from China, because Beijing sees Taiwan as its breakaway province and has threatened to recover Taiwan by force if Taipei declares independence or infinitely delays unification with the mainland. Cross-strait tensions have eased since Ma Ying-jeou from the China-friendly KMT party became president on May 20. Since then, Beijing and Taipei have resumed dialogue and have launched weekend charter flights. Press reports have said that Taiwan, for fear of damaging its improved ties with China, has asked the US to delay arms sales to Taiwan, postponing the transactions at least until after next month's Beijing Olympics. President Ma has denied those reports, saying that buying defensive arms is necessary for Taiwan and arms purchase will not stop just because Taipei-Beijing ties have improved.
