U.S. and Taiwan sign $250 million contract to maintain military communications systems

The United States has signed an agreement with Taiwan to maintain field communications complexes of the island’s armed forces. The value of the contract will be about $254.7 million.

The agreement will be valid until December 2028. According to the contract, the U.S. will have to send specialists to Taiwan to maintain Taiwan’s equipment.

The current field communications systems have been in service for almost 20 years – they were adopted back in 2006 – so the Taiwanese military has already faced a lack of commercial enterprises in the market that provide maintenance services.

In this regard, Taiwan’s armed forces had already planned to replace these systems several years ago and entered into a corresponding contract with the United States. The original plan was to complete the delivery of the new communications systems by 2025, but the publication’s sources said that these plans were postponed and the military decided to extend the service life of the current systems.

In March 2022, the U.S. and Taiwan entered into a $246.4 million contract for the purchase of field communications systems. The contract called for the island to receive 154 communications nodes, 24 repeaters and eight S-788 Type III van-mounted control systems, spare parts and related equipment, as well as software and system configuration and debugging services.