The Ministry of National Defense yesterday released information on seven categories of weapons systems to be procured under a stalled NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.57 billion) special defense budget, including precision artillery, long-range missiles, air defense anti-tank missiles and more than 200,000 uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The Executive Yuan approved a draft version of the budget on Nov. 27 last year and submitted it to the legislature for review.
The legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee yesterday invited Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to deliver a classified briefing and answer questions at a closed-door session.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Koo said he hoped to provide lawmakers across party lines with a detailed explanation of the proposal and urged that it be referred to committee review as soon as possible.
Following the briefing, the ministry submitted publicly releasable planning and implementation details for the proposed bill. The ministry said the special budget focuses on building a comprehensive defense system, integrating high technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate kill chains, and strengthening the domestic defense industry while establishing non-China-based supply chains.
The first category is precision artillery, including 60 M109A7 self-propelled howitzers, 4,080 rounds of precision munitions, 60 ammunition resupply vehicles, 13 recovery vehicles, and related shells and auxiliary equipment.
The second category is long-range precision strike missiles, including 82 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), 1,203 pods of precision rockets and 420 tactical missiles.
The third category comprises uncrewed platforms and counterdrone systems. This includes anti-armor loitering munitions, with 1,554 Altius-700M units and 478 Altius-600ISR units; approximately 200,000 UAVs — including coastal surveillance and reconnaissance drones, and coastal attack drones — as well as more than 1,000 uncrewed surface vessels and a range of counterdrone systems.
The fourth category comprises air-defense, ballistic missile defense and anti-armor missiles, including 70 Javelin anti-armor missile systems with 1,050 missiles, 24 TOW-2B anti-armor missile systems with 1,545 missiles, and various air-defense missile systems and munitions.
The fifth category covers AI-assisted capabilities, including AI-based decision-support systems, tactical networks and rapid intelligence-sharing application packages for military units.
The sixth category focuses on equipment to enhance sustained combat capabilities. Plans include expanding military production to meet wartime consumption, covering the production of ammunition and propellants, small-arms primers, new armored vehicle assembly lines, high-energy explosives, chemical protection masks and night-vision devices. This category also includes mobile battlefield denial equipment to improve area-denial capabilities.
The budget also calls for the procurement of urgently needed munitions to boost readiness stockpiles and meet training requirements before local production can be ramped up. These include 120mm tank rounds, 105mm tank rounds, 30mm autocannon ammunition, 155mm howitzer propellant charges and high-powered explosives.
The seventh category involves equipment and systems jointly developed and procured by Taiwan and the US. The ministry said such cooperation would allow Taiwan to acquire emerging technologies to strengthen operational resilience and enhance asymmetric combat capabilities.
The ministry also briefed the committee on the progress of arms procurement contracts, or letters of offer and acceptance. Five items — M109A7 howitzers, HIMARS, Altius anti-armor loitering munitions, Javelin missiles and TOW-2B missiles — have completed the US notification process.
For the remaining cases, the US Department of Defense is expediting its internal review procedures, the ministry said.
While procurement quantities and costs have been confirmed based on operational needs, adjustments would be made as appropriate following the legislature’s final approval of the budget, it said.
The ministry said that China’s increasingly targeted military exercises based on scenarios for operations against Taiwan suggest an intent to shift “from exercises to drills, and from drills to war,” exacerbating instability in the Taiwan Strait.
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