A total of six Taiwan Air Force F-16V fighters left an eastern air base Wednesday morning for a United States air base where they will be used to train Taiwanese pilots, a military source told CNA.

The six F-16Vs fighters, which are retrofitted F-16A/Bs, took off from Hualien Air Force Base at 10:30 a.m. for Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, the source said.

They will be stationed there and used to train Taiwanese pilots the Air Force sends to the U.S. as part of a Taiwan-U.S. program that began in the 1990s when Taipei purchased its first batch of the jets from Washington, the source added.

According to the source, Taiwan’s Air Force originally had a total of 11 F-16A/Bs stationed with Luke Air Base’s 21st Fighter Squadron for the training program.

As part of a program launched by the Air Force in 2016 to retrofit all of its 140 F-16A/Bs into the more advanced F-16V format, the 11 at Luke Air Base have since flown back to Taiwan in batches over the past week to be upgraded.

Since the retrofit for each F-16A/Bs takes at least a month to complete and the Air Force still needs F-16Vs stationed at Luke Air Base for the training program, it was decided to send six previously upgraded F-16Vs back to the Arizona Base on Wednesday so Taiwanese aviators can continue their training, the source added.

Six of the 11 F-16A/Bs arrived at Hualien Air Base on June 10 and another four on Tuesday. However, one of the 11, was involved in a hard landing at an airport in Honolulu due to a landing gear malfunction on June 7.

Nobody was injured, but the jet is still in the U.S. for further checkups and will not be sent back to Taiwan for the upgrade anytime soon.

The retrofit program equips the fighters with more advanced avionics, including APG-83 scalable agile beam radar, a helmet mounted cueing system, and other flight management and electronic warfare systems.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel