ROC fighters to be armed with locally developed cluster bombs

[xhw1986]

Republic of China Air Force will showcase its new and improved Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDF) Jan. 16, when the Ching-kuo fighter jets will be armed with locally developed Wan Chien weapons systems, the Air Force said Tuesday.

Seventy-one out of more than 120 on-duty IDFs saw upgrades by the state-run Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation to beef up the decade-old jets' air-to-ground combat capabilities.

To take some of the burden off of the nation's F-16 fleet, the Wan Chien cluster bombs, the name of which translates as "ten thousand swords," have been added to the IDFs, giving the fighters the ability to fire the bombs at a range of over 200 kilometers.

The bombs can be launched from the air over the Taiwan Strait to target troop concentrations, defensive positions, harbors and airstrips on the Chinese mainland, said Lin Yu-fang, a veteran lawmaker and long-time supporter of beefing up national defenses.

The Kuomintang lawmaker said it took NT$3 billion (US$100.6 million) and several years to develop the Wan Chien system, which carries up to 100 warheads and is capable of launching an attack from a great distance.

So far, 40 of the fighters based in Tainan have been retrofitted to be able to launch the weapons system, according to Lin's office.

Another wing based in Taichung is currently in the retrofitting process, with all of the fighters expected to have been fitted with the Wan Chien system by early 2017, the office said.

 

[Fsjal]

To be honest, those planes are never as good as the J-10.

Also, a long-range cluster bomb isn't enough to punch the Chinese.