The United States donated JUMP 20 drones and training to Taiwan to improve its security capability in the Taiwan Strait area, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported, citing the island’s Coast Guard Administration.
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It is reported that an agreement on the gratuitous supply of JUMP 20 drones with the possibility of vertical takeoff and landing was reached at the end of last year.
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The U.S. has agreed to supply drones and provide training on combating illegal oil trade, arms proliferation, illegal fishing, and cross-border criminal activity and dealing with maritime disasters, the FDA explained.
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Former Taiwan Air Force Deputy Commander Zhang Yanting told the agency that the JUMP 20 can conduct reconnaissance, surveillance and reconnaissance using multiple sensors. It can stay in the air for more than 14 hours and reach speeds of up to 92 kilometers per hour.
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The situation around Taiwan escalated significantly after a visit to the island in early August last year by then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. China, which considers the island one of its provinces, condemned Pelosi’s visit, seeing in this move US support for Taiwanese separatism, and held large-scale military exercises.
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Official relations between the central government of the PRC and its island province were interrupted in 1949 after the Kuomintang forces led by Chiang Kai-shek, defeated in a civil war with the Communist Party of China, moved to Taiwan. Business and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the parties began to contact through non-governmental organizations – the Beijing Association for the Development of Relations across the Taiwan Strait and the Taipei Cross-Strait Exchange Foundation.
