Taiwan upgrades fighter jets

Taiwan will this week receive its first batch of a fleet of Indigenous Defensive Fighters upgraded as part as part of a $587 million dollar project to beef up air defences, officials said Sunday.

An unspecified number of the domestically-manufactured jets are scheduled to be delivered in central Taichung city Thursday, an air force spokesman said.

The defence ministry is spending Tw$17 billion (US$587 million) upgrading 71 IDFs, or nearly half of the fleet based in the southern Tainan air base, as part of a four-year project which began in 2009.

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