At about 11 o’clock on the morning of Sunday 8 November, three grey fighters dropped out of the sky over Taiwan’s Pacific coast and lined up on the runway at Chihhang Air Base in Taitung. The first to land, tail number 6732, carried a Republic of China flag spread across its cockpit. The last one in, 6731, had a pilot with a message for the crowd.

As that jet taxied past, the pilot flashed a hand gesture for the number “21”, which airmen on the ground recognised as the signature of the 21st Fighter Squadron, the Taipei Times reported. Sources told the paper the pilot was Chiang Hui-yu, a 2014 Air Force Academy graduate and one of Taiwan’s first female F-16 pilots.

The three jets, serials 6729, 6731 and 6732, are the second batch of new-build F-16V Block 70s for the Republic of China Air Force, the Air Force Command Headquarters confirmed in a statement carried by Taiwan’s Central News Agency. They bring the number delivered to five of the 66 that Taiwan ordered.

Greenville to Taitung in six days

This delivery moved far faster than the first. According to the Taipei Times, the jets rolled off Lockheed Martin’s production line in Greenville, South Carolina, were moved to Fort Worth, Texas, and on Wednesday 4 November flew to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii with aerial refuelling tankers alongside. From there they continued west to Taiwan.

Taiwanese spotters had tracked them all the way. A military enthusiast Facebook page reported the departure from South Carolina on Tuesday 3 November, Taiwan News reported, and Defence Minister Wellington Koo told reporters on Friday 6 November that the jets would arrive soon. On Saturday the Air Force invited the press to a filming session at Chihhang, which all but confirmed the date.

Focus Taiwan (CNA) footage of the second batch of F-16V Block 70 jets arriving in Taiwan.

Compare that with the first pair. Jets 6727 and 6728 left Texas on 17 August and then sat at Hickam for about six weeks before finally reaching Chihhang on 2 October, as Afterburner reported in Taiwan F-16 Block 70: First Two Jets Land After Six Weeks in Hawaii. Inspections and the scheduling of tanker support were blamed for that delay.

A promise kept

When the first two jets arrived in October, Koo made clear they would not be the last of the year.

Five weeks later, the second batch is on the ramp. Taipei Times sources describe all three as single-seat aircraft, matching the first pair. The Air Force said it would now proceed with familiarisation training as it integrates the jets, gradually building up their initial operational capability.

The Block 70 belongs to the newest production generation of the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Beyond the new-build airframe, the ferry jets carry conformal fuel tanks along the upper fuselage, which free up underwing stations, and can take three extra external tanks for long transits, the Taipei Times noted.

Three years late and catching up

Washington approved the sale of 66 F-16Vs and related equipment in 2019, for about US$8 billion. Deliveries were meant to start in 2023 and be completed by the end of 2026. The relocation and restart of Lockheed Martin’s production line, the COVID-19 pandemic and supply-chain disruption all pushed the timetable back, the Taipei Times reported, while CNA cites technical issues.

The new jets join a fleet Taiwan already calls the F-16V: the older F-16A/Bs that Lockheed Martin and Taiwan’s Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation upgraded to Block 20 standard under the Phoenix Rising programme, completed in December 2023, according to Taiwan News. The new-build Block 70s are bought under a separate programme, Peace Phoenix Soaring, budgeted at NT$247.23 billion.

Five down, 61 to go. If the Greenville-to-Taitung pipeline keeps running at this week’s pace rather than the summer’s, the ramp at Chihhang is about to get a lot more crowded.

Sources: Focus Taiwan (CNA), Taipei Times, Taiwan News, Anadolu Agency (via UA.News), Al Jazeera