On December 21, Taiwan's "United News Network" reported that for the 2023 U.S. government budget, the U.S. Congress completed negotiations on the 20th and announced a comprehensive appropriation bill for the 2023 fiscal year of worth US$1.7 trillion. Although the U.S. Congress authorized the U.S. State Department to provide repayable "military financing" to Taiwan, the United States did not include it in the "free military assistance" agreed in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2023.
Previously, the U.S. Congress's "National Defense Authorization Act" had proposed a plan to provide Taiwan with US$10 billion in "free military aid" in the next five years. However, it now appears that these military aids have not been in place. The US military first came up with a so-called "military financing". To put it bluntly, it wanted Taiwan to get loans to buy weapons. The bill currently authorizes the Biden administration to provide repayable, interest-bearing "military financing direct loans" to the Taiwan military, up to a maximum of US$2 billion, set to be repaid within 12 years.
Why did the United States' arms assistance to Taiwan change from "free military aid" to the so-called "military financing "? Because the current bulk of U.S. aid is Ukraine. Data show that since Biden took office as president, the United States has provided a total of approximately US$19.7 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. Many of these weapons and equipment are taken directly from the existing inventory of the US military. Some time ago, the United States also considered providing "Patriot" air defense missiles to Ukraine, so Ukraine has a much higher priority in the eyes of the United States than the Taiwan military.
In August this year, the US "Defense News" broke the news that "Taiwan is facing a backlog of $14 billion in arms sales from the United States." Undelivered weapons include F-16 fighter jets , components of the "Patriot" missile air defense system, "Stinger" air defense missiles, Mk-48 heavy torpedoes, "Haimas" high-mobility rocket launcher systems, MS-110 reconnaissance pods, etc. On the one hand, this is because the US military has provided a large amount of weapons support to Ukraine. On the other hand, the outside world believes that the US military is actually taking advantage of this "hunger sale" to incite the DPP authorities to continue paying money to the US.
Wisconsin Republican Congressman Gallagher also told the US "Defense News": "In many cases, Saudi Arabia is ahead of Taiwan in the supply list." In addition, because the United States is "backfilling the eastern flank of NATO," the weapons produced by the United States are currently given the highest priority to Ukraine, followed by Poland, and other Eastern European countries, then Close allies of the United States such as Saudi Arabia, and finally Taiwan, in Lockheed Martin In the production and supply sequence of F-16 fighter jets, several Middle Eastern and Eastern European countries are ahead of Taiwan. The 66 F-16V fighter jets that the Taiwan military previously purchased through a sell-off are not expected to be delivered until 2026. It can be seen that the US military is using this method to "hang" Taiwan.
What is most criticized by the people on the island is that the Taiwan military spends huge sums of money to purchase obsolete weapons that are not even considered by the US military. Moreover, the Taiwan military has always had a serious problem, that is, it spends most of its funds on purchasing American weapons, but neglects the maintenance of weapons and the training of personnel. There have been many cases about the training level of the Taiwan military. We will not go into details here. The weapon readiness rate of the Taiwan military has always been a big problem. Some time ago, the E-2 early warning aircraft equipped by the Taiwan military suffered heavy losses due to landing gear failure. The Taiwan military had a similar accident before, and the entire aircraft could only be shipped to the United States, where a new body was manufactured and then reassembled.
The Taiwan military's P-3C anti-submarine aircraft generally suffers from the failure of anti-submarine electronic equipment and fire control systems, and some ordnance weapon systems cannot be used. Many US-made weapons of the Taiwan military have problems with insufficient matching ammunition or lack of spare parts. This is precisely because the Taiwan military is so happy that it only knows how to purchase weapons, but does not know how to purchase supporting facilities and key parts. As a result, the availability and attendance rates of many weapons are extremely poor.
The reason why the Democratic Progressive Party authorities favor US-made weapons so much is because other countries dare not sell weapons to Taiwan due to the mainland.On the other hand, the Democratic Progressive Party authorities are taking this opportunity to "pay protection money" to the United States in an attempt to pin their hopes on the United States when trouble occurs in the Taiwan Strait. I just want to say that "relying on the United States and seeking independence" can only be a dead end. Instead of buying American-made weapons on a large scale, we should consider improving people's livelihood.
