Taiwan lands the first two of 66 new F-16V Block 70s at Chihhang

Two new F-16V Block 70 fighters landed at Chihhang Air Base in Taitung at noon on Friday, 04:00 GMT, the first of 66 jets Taiwan ordered from the United States in 2019. They flew in via Hawaii and Guam. Defence Minister Wellington Koo, speaking at parliament in Taipei shortly before touchdown, said these would not be the only two delivered by the end of the year. He did not give the next arrival date.

The sale, approved in 2019, is worth about 8 billion dollars and is booked in Taipei as the Peace Phoenix Soaring project, NT$247.2 billion between 2020 and 2026. Delivery was once expected to start in 2023 and finish this year. Software trouble, a production-line move and supply-chain delays pushed the first jets past an August target. They sat in Hawaii while Donald Trump prepared to meet Xi Jinping in Washington at the end of September. Taipei Times reported that the hold was unexplained at the time.

Once the full batch is in service, Taiwan's F-16 fleet goes above 200. The island finished upgrading its older F-16s in 2023. Washington has not offered F-22s or F-35s. The Block 70s are the newest airframes Taipei can actually field, with newer radar, avionics and weapons meant to complicate operations by China's air force, including the J-20. Koo said China's intention to annex Taiwan by force has not changed. A US State Department spokesperson said Washington continues to stand with friends and allies in the Indo-Pacific, and that this includes Taiwan.

Beijing's foreign ministry did not answer a request for comment on Friday's landing. China claims Taiwan as its territory and has told Washington, repeatedly, to stop arming the island. The United States has no formal diplomatic relations with Taipei and is bound by law to provide means of defence. That legal line is what makes a two-jet delivery a political event as well as a logistics one.

The timing sits against two Trump decisions. In December 2025 he approved an 11 billion dollar arms package for Taiwan. In May, after meeting Xi in Beijing, he said a further 14 billion dollar package was being held in abeyance. Friday's jets are from the 2019 sale, not from either of those later packages. They still arrive a week after Trump and Xi met in Washington. US assessments cited by Reuters now treat a Chinese invasion before Taiwan's early 2028 presidential election as increasingly unlikely. Daily reality is less abstract: the air force scrambles almost every day to shadow Chinese aircraft and ships.

Chihhang, on the Pacific side of the island, is where the new Block 70s will be stationed. The point of an eastern base is dispersal. Hualien and Taitung sit away from the west-coast fields that would be the first targets in a missile opening. A runway on the Pacific coast does not stop a blockade. It does give planners a second place to launch fighters if the western bases are cratered. CNA said the deployment is meant to reinforce that eastern sector and to answer Chinese naval and air movement aimed at encircling the island.

Two aircraft do not change the order of battle. Sixty-six would. Koo's line, that more than these two will be in Taiwan before year-end, is the only public schedule on offer. The original plan was the whole batch by the end of 2026. Software and the production restart already broke that plan once. A second slip into 2027 would leave the eastern base with a token detachment through the next cross-strait political season.

Lockheed Martin builds the jets. The airframes that landed on Friday are the proof that the line is finally delivering, after years in which Taipei has complained about repeated delays on US weapons. The useful comparison is not with the J-20's brochure. It is with the calendar: August missed, noon on 2 October met, year-end still a promise.

What happens next is a count, not a slogan. If a third and fourth jet follow before December, Koo's parliamentary line holds. If they do not, the 2019 sale remains a contract with two aircraft on the ramp at Chihhang and 64 still on the far side of the Pacific.