A US congressional report released this week makes it clear that, without the acquisition of new aircraft, the Taiwanese air force risks being a shadow of itself by 2020 and incapable of meeting the challenge it faces in the Taiwan Strait.
The annual report by the Congressional Research Service, entitled Taiwan: Major US Arms Sales Since 1990 — which Defense News has called “required reading inside Taiwan defense circles and among US defense officials working with the island’s military” — provides a detailed analysis of US arms sales to Taiwan over more than two decades.
The section on F-16 jet sales provides the greatest shock. By 2020, it says, the number of fighter aircraft in the air force would drop by 70 percent without the acquisition of new F-16s as it retires near-obsolete F-5s and some ageing Mirage 2000s, whose spare parts are reportedly extremely costly.
Even if Taiwan were to acquire the 66 F-16C/Ds it has been requesting since 2006, the total number of aircraft would still have dropped by 50 percent by that time, the report says.
In numerous requests to the US over the years, Taiwan had made it clear that it understands the severity of the shortage it faces within the next decade and it has argued that it is seeking both upgrades for its 145 F-16A/Bs sold in 1992 and new aircraft.
In a letter of request submitted in November 2009, Taiwan wrote that the upgrade program would by necessity be “in parallel to, and not a substitute for, new F-16C/D” aircraft.
On a visit to the US in September last year, Vice Minister of National Defense Andrew Yang (楊念祖) called the F-16C/Ds and diesel-electric submarines — another program that has been stalled for several years — the most urgent systems for Taiwan to acquire, not the F-16A/B upgrades.
A notification to Congress in September last year included a US$5.2 billion upgrade package for the F-16A/Bs, but not the new F-16C/Ds. The Ministry of National Defense says the retrofits, which would be budgeted over a period of 12 years, would bring the F-16A/Bs’ capabilities to 80 percent of those of the F-16C/D, with some capabilities even surpassing the F-16C/D.
However, the package does not include new engines, meaning that their operational range would remain more limited than that of F-16C/Ds. The program also does not include airframe work, leaving unaddressed the problem of ageing aircraft that have now been in service for two decades.
According to Lockheed Martin, a retrofit would not start until 2017, after five years of preparatory work. Once it begins, it would take one squadron, or about 24 F-16A/Bs, out of service at a time over a period of five years.
Furthermore, the program would take three years longer than a program to sell the same number of 145 new F-16C/D fighters, which it says would take seven years.
During that same period, a number of Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDF) will also be out of service for mid-life upgrades, further compounding the quantitative crisis.
More recent events, which are not covered in the CRS report, seem to indicate that Taiwan is having second thoughts about running the two programs in parallel. Earlier this month, legislators and senior military officials said that the F-16A/B upgrades were more expensive than expected and that Taiwan might not have the financial resources to do both. Some also argued that rather than purchase the new F-16C/Ds, Taiwan should instead bid for Lockheed Martin’s F-35B, a problem-plagued aircraft that is still under development.
Such signaling has given rise to speculation in defense circles that Taiwan might want out of the F-16C/D project, at a time when the White House may finally be willing to make the aircraft available. A defense industry source told the Taipei Times yesterday that Taiwan’s National Security Council has been informed of the urgency of submitting a new letter of request for the F-16C/Ds to push the issue, but that such recommendations had “disappeared into a black hole.”
A strong indicator of a possible shift occurred on Thursday when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) met former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who arrived the same day on a three-day visit.
Although some were expecting that Ma would restate Taiwan’s interest in acquiring the F-16C/Ds, the president only mentioned the upgrades, telling Bush he hoped the program would provide the F-16A/Bs with capabilities “close to” those of the F-16C/Ds.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
LEVERAGE: China did not ‘need to fire a shot’ to deny Taiwan airspace over Africa when it owns ‘half the continent’s debt,’ a US official said, calling it economic warfare The EU has raised concerns about overflight rights following the delay of President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned state visit to the Kingdom of Eswatini after three African nations denied overflight clearance for his charter at the last minute. Taiwanese allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, as well as several US lawmakers and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries. Lai was scheduled to fly directly to Taiwan’s only African ally from yesterday to Sunday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession and his 58th birthday, but Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar suddenly revoked
The number of pet cats in Taiwan surpassed that of pet dogs for the first time last year, reaching 1,742,033, a 32.8 percent increase from 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday, citing a survey. By contrast, the number of pet dogs declined slightly by 1.2 percent over the same period to 1,462,528, the ministry said. Despite the shift, households with dogs still slightly outnumber those with cats by 1.2 percent. However, while the number of households with multiple dogs has remained relatively stable, households keeping more than two cats have increased, contributing to the overall rise in the feline population. The trend
RSS