According to a report published on Aug. 21 in the Liberty Times (the sister paper of the Taipei Times), NT$100 million (US$3.4 million) of next year’s NT$366.8 billion defense budget has been set aside to upgrade six US-made E-2K Hawkeye early-warning aircraft. Once completed, the aircraft would be of an equivalent specification to the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye planes in service on US Navy carriers.
The primary difference between E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes and the older E-2K Hawkeyes is the new AN/APY-9 radar, which can scan a much wider range of frequencies. This should mean that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) much-vaunted J-20 stealth fighter would have nowhere to hide.
There is also a need for jet-powered long-range early warning aircraft. This is because Taiwan’s air force does not possess any refueling aircraft.
In the event of a surprise attack by China, the initial wave would target ground radar stations and the runways at all the nation’s airbases and airports.
Although Taiwan has repair teams armed with quick-drying concrete to repair bombed airstrips within about two hours, E-2 series Hawkeye aircraft have an endurance of only four-and-a-half hours; that is not long enough.
Once Taiwan’s ground radar stations are paralyzed, if the air force is unable to keep its E-2 early warning aircraft in the skies, it would be deprived of its over-the-horizon radar and its ability to dispatch aircraft would be critically impaired.
Moreover, E-2 Hawkeyes are turboprop aircraft, which means that their cruising speed is limited to approximately 400kph to 500kph.
At the 2018 China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, the PLA unveiled its J-20 stealth fighter and revealed that it could carry four PL-15 air-to-air missiles in its internal weapons bay, which have a range of approximately 250km.
This means that, in an invasion scenario, to stay out of range of the J-20’s missiles, Taiwan’s E-2 Hawkeyes would be forced to maintain a greater distance from the battlefield, and, in doing so, cede control of airspace to the PLA.
Finally, introducing airborne early warning and control aircraft would provide Taiwan’s military with a double layer of protection.
The data link of the military’s E-2K Hawkeye — even after the upgrade — would be sluggish and unable to communicate with the air force’s Mirage 2000 fighters.
This is not due to any technical obstacles, but rather because the US is currently unwilling to release the technology to Taiwan.
The French military’s E-2C Hawkeye aircraft have been interoperable with its own Mirage 2000 fighters for several decades, while the data link of Japan’s E-2C Hawkeye is able to share data with its domestically produced F-16 equivalent, the Mitsubishi F-2.
Fortunately for Taiwan, the international arms market is pragmatic.
A good example is the French government’s decision in early 1992 to sell Taiwan Mirage 2000 fighters. By the end of 1992, Washington had agreed to sell F-16 jets to Taiwan.
In 1999, Taiwan’s domestically produced Sky Sword II air-to-air missile entered service, and the following year, the US agreed to sell Taiwan US-produced AIM-120 air-to-air missiles.
In 2015, Taiwan’s domestically made Wan Chien air-to-ground missile was commissioned and fitted to Indigenous Defense Fighters, and two years later the US agreed to sell Taiwan the AGM-154C Joint Standoff Weapon, a glide bomb for use with F-16s.
Introducing a second type of jet-powered long-range early warning aircraft would force the US to provide a full-spec version of its E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft, instead of a weakened variant. God bless Taiwan.
Chang Feng-lin is a university lecturer.
Translated by Edward Jones
We are used to hearing that whenever something happens, it means Taiwan is about to fall to China. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) cannot change the color of his socks without China experts claiming it means an invasion is imminent. So, it is no surprise that what happened in Venezuela over the weekend triggered the knee-jerk reaction of saying that Taiwan is next. That is not an opinion on whether US President Donald Trump was right to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro the way he did or if it is good for Venezuela and the world. There are other, more qualified
China’s recent aggressive military posture around Taiwan simply reflects the truth that China is a millennium behind, as Kobe City Councilor Norihiro Uehata has commented. While democratic countries work for peace, prosperity and progress, authoritarian countries such as Russia and China only care about territorial expansion, superpower status and world dominance, while their people suffer. Two millennia ago, the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius (孟子) would have advised Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that “people are the most important, state is lesser, and the ruler is the least important.” In fact, the reverse order is causing the great depression in China right now,
This should be the year in which the democracies, especially those in East Asia, lose their fear of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China principle” plus its nuclear “Cognitive Warfare” coercion strategies, all designed to achieve hegemony without fighting. For 2025, stoking regional and global fear was a major goal for the CCP and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), following on Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Little Red Book admonition, “We must be ruthless to our enemies; we must overpower and annihilate them.” But on Dec. 17, 2025, the Trump Administration demonstrated direct defiance of CCP terror with its record US$11.1 billion arms
As technological change sweeps across the world, the focus of education has undergone an inevitable shift toward artificial intelligence (AI) and digital learning. However, the HundrED Global Collection 2026 report has a message that Taiwanese society and education policymakers would do well to reflect on. In the age of AI, the scarcest resource in education is not advanced computing power, but people; and the most urgent global educational crisis is not technological backwardness, but teacher well-being and retention. Covering 52 countries, the report from HundrED, a Finnish nonprofit that reviews and compiles innovative solutions in education from around the world, highlights a
RSS