Taiwan has just commissioned its second and last pair of former U.S. Kidd–class destroyers, significantly boosting its naval surface power and improving its ability to repulse a Chinese amphibious assault. But according to Defense News, they likely represent the island nation’s last major arms purchase for some time:
The commissioning comes as the United States, the islands main arms supplier, increases pressure on parliament, in which the opposition has a slim majority, to pass a scaled down budget to buy more U.S. weapons. The budget has been bogged down in parliament for two years by opposition lawmakers who say the package, which would include eight diesel submarines, is too expensive and provocative.
In the 1980s and early '90s, Taiwan pulled way ahead of rival China in defense technology, especially in regards to aircraft and missiles. Taiwan even fielded its own light fighter design, the Ching-Kuo, and armed it with locally-built air-to-air missiles.
But as pro-Chinese politicians have gained power in Taiwan, defense modernization has faltered. Proposed purchases of submarines, Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion patrol planes and Patriot missiles have fallen by the wayside. Meanwhile, China has accelerated its own modernization with weapons designed for long-range operations and amphibious assaults … as well as with massive numbers of ballistic missiles.
Taiwan is banking on some sort of peaceful reconciliation with China, while China quietly prepares to “reconcile” by force.
–David Axe
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m a Taiwanese student studying in America, and the way that these KMT (pro-China) factions in Taiwan are preventing the modernization of the island’s military is just disgraceful.
Stupid, I hate it.
Taiwan needs the submarines, Aegis, and P-3C. PAC-3 is debatable; its potential in the midst of hundreds of ballistic missiles isn’t much. I’d divert the $3 billion(?) earmarked for PAC-3 and use it to upgrade fighters, build new installations, and improve the military from the ground up.
I feel for you Ben if you look around the world the LLL mentality has deseased into many societies. From Isreal were a very LLL leaning Olmert can’t decide if fighting hezbollah while they were hammering N Isreal all the way to nearly thier capitol, to France were “youths” who all happened to be muslims were burning parris and Chirac’s answer was more welfare and even today 100+ cars burn a night still, then you look to the US were we are engaged in a war and some just want give up and go back to the days of blissfull ingnorance were terrorism was just some accpetable losses we had to stomach every couple years 93 WT, Cole, Kenya, Narobi, and they think the real threat is other Americans who want to fight instead of just accept civilian sacrifises to the alter of no war at any cost retardation ect.., and then Tiawan were one pro-china faction believes that the real threat is not China a nation that has on many occation threatened and openly planned war with Tiawan but they see the threat as themselves Tiawan WTF talk about blaming the victim.
We live in a sad world indeed.
China’s “inadequate” Amphib force keeps getting scarier, at some point the sheer weight of numbers will overwhelm the ROC+USN’s ability to deter it. For all the progress the Mainland has made, I still dread that day.
Notice the blatant anti-Chinese / antiCommunism in this article. That disgraces the internet. if any other Taiwanese student actually thinks that any amount of weapons will “deter” the Mainland from unification, I will laugh at his myopic views. If nothing else, the mainland’s production and mass attacks will overwhelm anything Taiwan has. 700 Chinese ballistic missiles versus a dozen U.S.-built ships won’t make a difference. Grow up and face the truth, Taiwan has no way to match the mainland in an arms race.
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