Lockheed Martin has handed over Taiwan’s first F-16 Block 70 fighter at a ceremony in Greenville, South Carolina.

Social media posts dated 29 March show Lockheed officials, including company aeronautics head Greg Ulmer, at the ceremony. 

South Carolina Officials pose with Taiwan F-16

Source: X user @sara_hazzard

Attendees pose with Taiwan’s first F-16 Block 70 at the Greenville Ceremony

The jet is a two-seat F-16D and marks the first delivery of 66 examples that the East Asian nation has on order. F-16 Block 70s are powered by GE Aerospace F110 engines.

Media reports from Taiwan suggest the aircraft will arrive in the country later this year. FlightGlobal has reached out to Lockheed about the handover. 

Deliveries of the jets were complicated by the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on aviation supply chains.

In July 2024, Taiwan’s defence ministry said that technical issues related to producing the aircraft had been resolved, telling a local legislator that deliveries would be completed by the end of 2026.

Days after the defence ministry’s remarks, OJ Sanchez, then the vice president of Lockheed’s integrated fighter group, said that the company hoped to achieve four F-16 Block 70/72 deliveries monthly in the mid-2020s.

Other buyers of Block 70/72 standard F-16s are Bahrain, Bulgaria, Morocco, Slovakia, and Turkey.

The F-16 is the cornerstone of Taiwanese airpower. In late 2023 Taiwan’s Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation completed an upgrade programme for 139 Republic of China Air Force F-16s, taking them to the more advanced F-16V configuration – equivalent to the new build F-16 Block 70.

The military threat to Taiwan continues to grow. Chinese combat aircraft routinely operate in close proximity to the country’s airspace, including routine intrusions into its Air Defense Identification Zone.

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