Demand for new defensive military equipment is dictated by three primary factors: perceived enemy threat, capability enhancement and logistical support.
In the past few years, all three branches of Taiwan’s military have submitted purchase requests according to their respective needs. These packages easily total hundreds of billions of New Taiwan dollars.
The combined budgets of the three services place immense pressure on the nation’s coffers and invariably squeezes government spending in other areas.
For instance, the air force is trying to buy F-16V jets from the US and the army wants to acquire M1 Abrams tanks.
While the military has a dazzling array of equipment on its wish list, it is impossible to ignore the problem that an awful lot of taxpayers’ money is being wasted.
After much petitioning, 15 Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, originally intended for the army, have been diverted to the air force’s Air Rescue Group.
Why did the air force not look into upgrading the capabilities of its old Sikorsky S-70C Seagull search-and-rescue helicopters?
According to the air force, the choppers have clocked up 8,000 flying hours and are overburdened with frequent missions, which means that they are no longer suitable for carrying out diverse rescue missions, so the group has been forced to borrow dozens of Black Hawks from the army.
Replacement of the Sikorsky S-70C helicopters with the first batch of upgraded S-70C-1s has become official government policy.
Curiously, the air force is loudly banging the drum to spend several hundred billion NT dollars on more than 60 F-16V jets, but is unwilling to spend tens of billions on extending the capabilities of its existing Seagull helicopters — the workhorses of the Air Rescue Group and beloved by the public — or simply buy search-and-rescue helicopters. This is unbelievable.
Furthermore, the army has already submitted a formal proposal to buy US-made M1 Abrams at a cost that runs into tens of billions of NT dollars, yet at the same time, it is uninterested in replacing its standard-issue rifles or even providing basic nighttime fighting equipment to ordinary infantry — the kit is limited to special forces troops.
This is just one example of the military splurging on expensive equipment programs while neglecting to provide even a basic kit to ordinary infantry divisions.
Other examples include the air force’s C-130 Hercules aircraft, which have been in operation for more than two decades. Despite this, the military’s top brass seem uninterested in upgrading transport aircraft.
The examples are too numerous to mention. It demonstrates that purchases of military equipment are often mired by subjective bias, and that many urgently needed capabilities and improvements are sacrificed for expensive larger programs.
This culture within the military of “robbing Peter to pay for Paul” urgently needs rethinking.
Ray Song is a graduate of the Institute of Strategic and International Affairs at National Chung Cheng University.
Translated by Edward Jones
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