After years of slipped deadlines, restarted production lines, and enough delay drama to fill a season of prestige TV, Taiwan's first factory-fresh Vipers are finally pointed home.

Two jets, tail numbers 6727 and 6728, lifted off from Fort Worth, Texas, on 17 August 2026 and turned across the Pacific for the long ferry flight to Chiayi Air Base. They are the tip of a 66-aircraft spear, and Taipei has waited a very long time for it.

Six years, 66 jets, one very late delivery

El F-16 is no stranger to Taiwan, which already flies a healthy fleet of them, but these are a different animal. The Block 70, sold as the F-16V Viper, is the most advanced Fighting Falcon ever built: AESA radar, a new mission computer, conformal fuel tanks bolted to the spine for extra reach, and a glass cockpit that would make a 1980s Viper driver weep. It is still what it always was, a single-engine, single-seat multirole fighter (the two-seat trainer wears a D), just dragged into the 2020s.

Taiwan ordered 66 of them in 2019 under the Peace Phoenix Soaring program, a deal worth roughly US$7.75 billion. The plan was tidy: start deliveries around 2023, wrap by the end of 2026. Reality was not. COVID, a production line relocated and restarted in Greenville, South Carolina, supply-chain snarls and software gremlins shoved the whole schedule right. Lockheed eventually threw two shifts at it, running the line up to 20 hours a day to claw back time.

That grind finally paid off. On 17 August, jets 6727 and 6728 departed the US for the trans-Pacific haul, with aerial refueling and a maintenance stop along the way. Those conformal fuel tanks should make the crossing far less thirsty than Taiwan's 1997 Viper delivery.

Explainer: Taiwan takes delivery of its first F-16V Block 70 from the US.

Por qué es importante

This is more than a fleet top-up. Taiwan had already upgraded roughly 140 older F-16A/B jets to the V standard under the parallel Peace Phoenix Rising project, completed in 2023. The 66 new-builds push the island's Viper force past 200 aircraft, a serious hedge against a Chinese air arm now fielding stealthy J-20s just across the strait. For a nation living in the shadow of a far larger neighbour, radar range and missile reach are not luxuries.

The remaining jets are expected to trickle in through 2027 and 2028, eventually settling at Zhihang Air Base in Taitung under the 7th Tactical Fighter Wing. Late? Spectacularly. But two Vipers in the air beat a hangar full of promises, and for Taipei, the wait just got a little shorter.

Sources: AeroTime, Zona Militar, CNA / Focus Taiwan (GlobalSecurity)