The defense package approved by Washington for sale to Taiwan on Wednesday last week includes weapons that have demonstrated their effectiveness in destroying Russian tanks and command posts in the Russia-Ukraine war, signaling a strategic shift from the defense of Taiwan toward preventing a Chinese People’s Liberation Army landing, a Nikkei Asia report quoted a retired US military officer as saying,
The package, worth US$11.1 billion, contains 82 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), 420 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), 60 self-propelled howitzers, 60 carrier ammunition tracked vehicles, 1,050 Javelin man-portable anti-tank missiles and related equipment as well as 1,545 TOW anti-tank missiles and ALTIUS-700M kamikaze drones.
This is US President Donald Trump’s second arms sale to Taiwan during his second term.
REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
The weapons in this package are significantly different from those that Taipei had tended to procure before, such as advanced models of fighter jets and warships.
“This package is full of weapons that will make a Chinese [landing] on Taiwan difficult to execute and sustain,” retired US Navy rear admiral Mark Montgomery said.
The combination of long-range precision-guided fires such as ATACMS and HIMARS, and closer-range weapons such as howitzers, Javelin and TOW missiles “will place Chinese at risk,” said Montgomery, who is a senior fellow at the Washington think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“The UAVs [uncrewed aerial vehicles] will assist both in preventing Chinese forces from getting ashore and maneuvering once ashore,” he said, adding that Chinese ground forces would face greater risks should Taiwan obtain more counter-intervention munitions.
The Nikkei Asia report also quoted an anonymous US government source, saying there are two major reasons for Taiwan’s shift in priorities. One is former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022 being followed by China’s military drills, and the other is the successes and failures of Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion, the source said.
The second arms sale approved by the Trump administration features a broader range of weapons and is larger in overall scale compared with the first package announced last month, which included the sale of spare and repair parts for F-16 jets, C-130 transport aircraft and Taiwan’s indigenous fighter planes, worth US$330 million.
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