‘Fighter jets trump battle tanks’ in Taiwan’s US arms purchase priorities
- Island aims to buy more than 100 Abrams tanks from the Pentagon but some observers say the focus should stay on aircraft
Taiwan is in greater need of advanced F-16 fighter jets than the battle tanks the self-ruled island has requested from Washington to fend of military threats from Beijing, analysts said on Thursday.
The assessment followed confirmation from Taiwan’s military that it had sent requests to the Pentagon for a series of hardware purchases, including 108 M1A2 Abrams tanks.
Taiwan has also asked to buy 1,240 BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles, 409 FGM-148 Javelin surface-to-air missiles and 250 FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missfes.
“The process is going smoothly and on schedule,” the defence ministry said, adding the purchases are necessary to “help raise the defence capability of our armed forces and consolidate the security partnership between Taiwan and the United States as well as the stability in the region”.
Taiwanese foreign ministry spokesman Andrew Lee said the US was reviewing the requests.
A formal notice of the request has reportedly been sent to the US Congress for approval.
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Analysts said that while the tanks were considered state of the art, they would be of deterrence only if the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) made a landing attack on the island.
Yen Chen-shen, research fellow at the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University in Taipei, said the island’s topography and the PLA’s potential deployment of air, missile and naval forces would limit the effectiveness of the Abrams tanks.
“For a small island like Taiwan, it would be better to get F-16V fighter jets,” Yen said.
Taiwan applied in March to buy 66 of the US’ new supersonic F-16 Viper jets to upgrade its existing fleet and the request is under review.
The US has remained Taiwan’s major arms supplier since it switched diplomatic recognition from Beijing to Taipei in 1979.
US President Donald Trump has also accelerated the arm sales process for Taiwan as part of his administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy that presents Beijing as a military and economic threat.
Late on Thursday, the Chinese foreign ministry demanded that Washington stop arms sales to the island to avoid damaging bilateral ties.
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Song Zhongping, a Hong Kong-based military analyst, said the Abrams tanks would probably be deployed at beachheads in the case of a PLA amphibious assault operation.
“But these 108 tanks could do little given the sheer gap in the military power of the two sides,” he said.
Song also said Taiwan would pay a higher price than other countries for the tanks because the island was so reliant on the US for arm sales.
“Other countries get the M1A2s at around US$10 million each, but certainly the Americans would price them up for Taiwan and Taiwan have to accept it,” he said.
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But some observers said the tanks could have a useful role to play in the island’s defences.
Chieh Chung, a research fellow in national security affairs at the National Policy Foundation in Taipei, said: “In order to capture Taiwan, the PLA eventually has to send forces to land on Taiwan, making it highly necessary for Taiwan to have sophisticated tanks like the M1A2 to deter the invading force.”
Lin Ying-yu, a research fellow at the Association of Strategic Foresight, said Taiwan’s M60A3 Patton tanks had been in service for decades and were outdated.
“There is a strong need for the military to replace those old tanks with M1A2s, especially when the PLA tanks are already more superior than M60A3s,” he said.
Additional reporting by Liu Zhen
