While pointing to improvements the Taiwan military has made in recent years, Lawless said,"there is much more that Taiwan needs to do and that we need to do together."
"We are following through with our commitments to provide necessary defense articles and services and hope that Taiwan is similarly committed to address the challenges I have discussed," he said.
Randall Schriver, the State Department's top official on China told the conference: "We urge Taiwan to take the steps needed to acquire defensive weapons and systems sufficient to address the ever-increasing threat posed by the PRC."
The US arms sale offer, including four Kidd-class destroyers and 12 P-3C Orion submarine-hunting aircraft and help in acquiring conventional submarines, was the largest in a decade, and much bigger than Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense had expected would be authorized when it submitted its wish list, Taiwan officials said privately.
Taiwan's military budget has been decreasing in real terms, both as a proportion of total government spending and as a percentage of GDP, according to a US expert.
The US government thinks acquiring Lockheed Martin Corp's Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) anti-missile system should be a top priority to meet the threat from the 650 or so ballistic missiles China is expected to have targeted on Taiwan by 2005, a senior US official told reporters.
The official, who spoke on condition he not be identified, said 2008 would be too late "to demonstrate that a credible effort is being made to address the threat."
In Taipei, Taiwan's defense minister, Tang Yao-ming (
Another top priority should be upgrading Taiwan's combat telecommunications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance -- the so-called "C4ISR" capabilities and infrastructure that are the electronic brains of national command and control, the senior US official said.
A third top acquisition priority, he added, should be anti-submarine warfare capabilities. That would include the P-3C Orion maritime reconnaissance patrol aircraft, the deployment of the four US Kidd-class destroyers on offer from the US and up to eight diesel-electric submarines that Northrop Grumman Corp and General Dynamics Corp are competing to design and build.
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