Making Taiwan a “very difficult objective to take” is the nation’s best defense strategy, and the US can help as it has with Ukraine against Russia, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley said on Thursday.
“Taiwan is a defensible island. We just need to help the Taiwanese to defend it a little bit better,” Milley told a US Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing.
He was responding to a question from US Senator Rick Scott on whether proposed military spending for next year was enough to deter a Chinese military attack.
Photo: AFP
Milley said that “the best defense of Taiwan is done by the Taiwanese” with US support, and that the key to deterrence was to “make sure that the Chinese know that if they were to attack Taiwan, it’s a very, very difficult objective to take.”
China has observed several lessons in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including the challenges of conducting an amphibious or air assault on Taiwan with its millions of people, Milley said.
In his written testimony, Milley said that China is continuing to develop significant nuclear, space, cyber, land, air and maritime military capabilities, and that “they are working every day to close the technology gap with the US and its allies.”
“In short, they remain intent on fundamentally revising the global international order in their favor by mid-century, they intend to be a military peer of the US by 2035 and they intend to develop the military capabilities to seize Taiwan by 2027,” Milley said.
Also responding to a question asked by Scott, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin defended the Pentagon’s spending proposal, saying its focus on investments in technology, cyberspace and undersea capabilities would help with deterring China and confronting the existing challenge of Russia.
He said the US considered China to be “a now and forever problem in terms of a challenge” that would evolve.
As eight basketball-playing international students appealed to the Taiwanese basketball industry after they were excluded from the draft of an upcoming new league merging the P.League+ and the T1 League, the new league’s preparatory committee spokesperson Chang Shu-jen (張樹人) yesterday said the committee would tomorrow discuss the supplementary measures and whether the international students can join the draft. The students on Tuesday called for support on their right to play in the upcoming new league, after a merger involving the two leagues impacted their eligibility for the draft. The international players from the University Basketball Association (UBA), led by first pick prospect
Some foreign companies are considering moving Taiwanese employees out of China after Beijing said it could impose the death penalty on “die-hard” Taiwanese independence advocates, four people familiar with the matter said. The new guidelines have caused some Taiwanese expatriates and foreign multinationals operating in China to scramble to assess their legal risks and exposure, said the people, who include a lawyer and two executives with direct knowledge of the discussions. “Several companies have come to us to assess the risks to their personnel,” said the lawyer, James Zimmerman, a Beijing-based partner at the Perkins Coie law firm. He declined to identify
WARNING: China has stepped up harassment of foreign vessels after its new regulation took effect last month, an official said, citing an incident in the Diaoyutai Islands The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday linked China’s seizure of a Taiwanese fishing vessel illegally operating in its territorial waters to Beijing’s new regulation authorizing the China Coast Guard to seize boats in waters it claims. Chinese officials boarded and then seized a Taiwanese fishing vessel operating near China’s coast close to Kinmen County late on Tuesday and took it to a Chinese port, the CGA said. The Penghu-registered squid fishing vessel Da Jin Man No. 88 (大進滿88) was boarded and seized by China Coast Guard east-northeast of Liaoluo Bay (料羅灣), 17.5 nautical miles (32.4km) from Taiwan’s restricted waters off Kinmen,
NOT ENOUGH: Although the US is to deliver Switchblade 300s and Altius 600M-Vs to Taiwan, military leaders believe the nation needs more attack drones, a source said The Ministry of National Defense (MND) has included the funding needed to mass-produce Type-1 and Type-2 suicide drones in next year’s budget plan, a military source said yesterday. Although the US government last month approved sales of Switchblade 300 loitering munitions and Altius 600M-V uncrewed aerial vehicles to Taiwan, which are scheduled for delivery between this year and the next, military leaders assessed that Taiwan would still have an inadequate number of attack drones to bolster national defense, the source said, asking to remain anonymous. Taiwan needs to mass produce locally made attack drones, including Type-1 and Type-2 suicide drones, they