A defense official yesterday said that a purported new arms sale the US is assembling for Taiwan likely includes Integrated Battle Command Systems (IBCS).
The anonymous official’s comments came hours after the Financial Times (FT) reported that Washington is preparing a US$20 billion arms sale encompassing “Patriot missiles and other weapons,” citing eight sources.
The Taiwanese official said the IBCS is an advanced command and control system that would play a key role in President William Lai’s (賴清德) flagship defense program, the “T-Dome,” an integrated air defense network to counter ballistic missiles and other threats.
Photo: Screen grab from Lockheed Martin’s Web site
The IBCS would increase Taiwan’s defense capabilities, integrating the nation’s nine Patriot missile battalions and their Tien Kung (天弓, Sky Bow) missile-armed counterparts under a unified command system, he said.
That would enable Taiwanese air defense units to use data from any sensor system and significantly boost reaction time, official said.
Such capabilities would increase defense resilience, as jamming one launcher’s radar would not disable the entire system, they said.
Prioritizing the qualitative transformation offered by the ICBS over the quantitative increase of Patriot missiles is the main focus of the nation’s air defense procurement plans, the official said.
The purported ICBS acquisition, should it go forward, would allow the military to establish an integrated defense over Taiwan proper, instead of relying on a patchwork of point-defense systems, they said.
Beijing has raised the arms package as an issue that could “derail” US President Donald Trump’s planned state visit to China in April, the FT cited three of its sources as saying.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) told Trump in a call on Wednesday that Taiwan was “the most important issue,” while the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called on the US to “handle the issue of arms sales to Taiwan with prudence,” it reported.
“China traditionally has sought to dissuade the US from taking actions it opposes, such as Taiwan arms sales, during the run-up to presidential meetings,” Brookings Institute analytics Ryan Hass was quoted as saying.
The US Department of Defense referred inquiries on the FT report to the US Department of State, which declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday evening.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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