Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen says US arms deals help ‘aggressively promote’ indigenous defence industry
- On Taiwan’s armed forces day, Tsai says homegrown submarine and jet trainer programmes are not just about sloganeering
- US expects Taipei’s defence budget to grow ‘commensurate with the threats’ it faces
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen said the self-governing island has been “aggressively promoting indigenous national defence” with help from US arms deals that have angered China.
“We locally build our submarines and fighter jets, and these are not just slogans,” Tsai said at an annual armed forces day ceremony in Taipei on Friday. She said purchases of M1A2 Abrams tanks and multirole F-16V fighter aircraft from the US were proof that “our determination to defend ourselves [has] also won support from international society”.
Tsai said an indigenous submarine programme, a factory to build those vessels in the southern port city of Kaohsiung, and a jet trainer prototype were in the works.
Beijing opposes all arms sales to Taiwan but has specifically objected to sales of advanced fighter jets such as the F-16V, whose active electronically scanned array radar is compatible with that used aboard the fifth-generation F-35 stealth fighters now entering service with the US military.
This month, Washington approved the sale of 66 F-16Vs to Taiwan in a US$8 billion deal. It recently waved through the US$2.2 billion sale of 108 Abrams tanks and 250 shoulder-launched Stinger surface-to-air missiles.