US-based AMS Group, a provider of technology, equipment and integrated logistics support services, is to open an office in Taipei by the end of this year, senior vice president of global aftermarket Michael Perry said on Monday.
Perry made the remark at an event after a panel discussion on Taiwan-US defense industry cooperation held by the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington.
AMS’ board of directors earlier that day approved opening an office in Taiwan following communications from Taipei that it welcomes the defense contractor’s services, he said.
The firm would be able to provide spare parts and components for Taiwan’s older weapons systems, Perry added.
The timetable for establishing the office would be determined by business opportunities, he said, adding that the group is cognizant that other US defense contractors are interested in Taiwan’s business.
While Taiwan’s domestic defense industry could meet half of its military equipment needs, international support would still be needed for advanced equipment, such as stealth jets, submarines and vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, institute senior research fellow David An (安大維) said in a report to the panel.
The nation’s defense sector has annual revenue of US$2.3 billion, or 23 percent of the defense budget, but it is heavily concentrated among a few large, government-backed companies, he said.
Taiwan should increase the competitiveness of its defense sector as it moves to enhance and upgrade its self-defense capabilities, US-Taiwan Business Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers said.
The systems integration of Taiwan’s indigenous submarine program would benefit from foreign technical assistance, he said.
If the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology fails to integrate the submarine’s systems, the political fallout might cause unacceptable setbacks to the program, he added.
While Taiwan still has the time to develop its own submarines, Taipei and Washington need to pick up the pace of cooperation, Hammond-Chambers said, adding that the two governments also have to prepare for China’s inevitable — and loud — complaints.
The Taiwanese and US defense industries should strengthen their cooperation and integrate Taiwan as part of the global supply chain, he said, adding that US President Donald Trump should take stronger and more assertive actions in support of Taiwan.
As Taiwan lacks the technology to integrate the sophisticated systems and components of advanced submarines and fighter jets, US technical assistance would be beneficial to the nation’s weapons programs, Taiwan Security Analysis Center director Mei Fu-shing (梅復興) said.
Two US firms specializing in systems integration have expressed an interest in working with Taiwan’s submarine program following the US Department of State’s approval last month of marketing licenses for related technologies, he said.
Although the US encourages Taiwan to develop asymmetric warfare capabilities, they are mainly useful for countering a Chinese invasion, not dealing with saber-rattling from Chinese military drills, Mei said.
These actions by Beijing demonstrate that Taiwan needs to obtain the most advanced fighter aircraft, Mei added.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS