Taiwan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Jura said:

interestingly,
Pentagon Blocks Request to Send Marine Embassy Guards to Taiwan

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The State Department’s request to the Pentagon for a Marine detachment to help secure an unofficial American embassy in Taiwan has been rejected by Secretary of Defense James Mattis, according to CNN.

Last month, a request by the State Department to send a Marine detachment to a new American Institute in Taiwan was denied by Mattis, according

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A unnamed defense official has told CNN that the Marines were assumed to be arriving in Taiwan in October.

The new American facility, which will be located just outside of the capital of Taipei, will be able to house 450 people according to the

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.

State Department officials did not comment to CNN on the specifics regarding the decision.

This denial ultimately comes at time when

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and China are rocky.

The U.S. government does not officially recognize Taiwan as a country. This is due to the “One China Policy,” dating back to the early 1970s. China maintains ceremonial rule over Taiwan. However, the U.S. has had an established “de facto American embassy,” since 1979.

The security requirement for AIT will likely be augmented like other de facto embassies or similar unofficial U.S. diplomatic outposts. This is a similar situation to the use of private contractors in the Middle East and Africa, according to CNN.

According to a State Department

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, the agency does not does take any type of responsibility for the personnel employed by a list of several security companies that are used by the Department of State for security purposes.

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The U.S. State Department has approved a significant spare parts support package for Taiwan to support its fleet of military aircraft, marking a departure from the previous practice of approving such sales to the island in smaller packages.

According to a Foreign Military Sales notification by the Defense and Security Cooperation Agency to Congress issued Monday, approval has been given to “provide funds for blanket order requisitions, under a Cooperative Logistics Supply Support Arrangement for stock replenishment supply of standard spare parts, and repair/replace of spare parts in support of the F-16, C-130, F-5, Indigenous Defense Fighter (IDF), all other aircraft systems and subsystems, and other related elements of logistics and program support” to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, or TECRO.

All DSCA notifications are not final; if cleared by the Senate, procurement quantities and costs can still change in final negotiations.

The total estimated program cost is $330 million and is significant, as it marks a return to the practice of such support packages under a single notification and approval for the first time since 2011, when a similar package worth $52 million was approved under the Obama administration.

Though not militarily significant, the latest move comes against a backdrop of recent trade tensions and sanctions against Chinese entities for China’s acquisition of Russian weapons. The approval is likely to further inflame relations between the United States and China.

This would be the second major arms sale to Taiwan under the Trump administration, and will enable Taiwan to sustain its fleet of Northrop Grumman F-5E/F aircraft, Lockheed Martin F-16A/B fighter jets and C-130 transport planes. The U.S. had previously cleared a package of air-launched missiles, torpedoes and other support equipment

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.

However, arms sales from the U.S. have slowed under previous administrations, even as China has embarked on a massive military modernization drive, and the military balance across the Taiwan Strait is now almost overwhelmingly in China’s favor.

Taiwan has outstanding requirements for a range of military capabilities, including new fighter jets, as its 1970s-era F-5E/Fs are due to be retired soon and its other fighters are about two decades old.

China regards the self-governing island of Taiwan as a breakaway province and has not ruled out the use of force to retake it; arms sales to Taiwan usually result in a diplomatic backlash. The United States has no formal relations with Taiwan as part of the “One China” policy, although it has previously provided arms required for “self-defense” to the island under the Taiwan Relations Act.

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Taiwanese shipbuilder CSBC Corporation has given further details of the landing platform dock (LPD) vessel that it will build for the Republic of China Navy (RoCN).

CSBC received a contract for the vessel, which has been ordered to fulfil the RoCN’s amphibious assault requirements, in April 2018.

As reported by Jane’s on 27 September, the LPD will have an overall length of 153 m, an overall beam of 23 m, and a hull draught of 6 m. It can attain a maximum speed of 21.5 kt and a range of 12,500 n miles at the economical cruising speed of 13 kt.

The vessel will be armed with a 76 mm naval gun in the primary position, and a close-in weapon system (CIWS) turret, and two 12.7 mm machine gun positions in the forward section.

CSBC has since disclosed that the LPD will also be armed with launchers that can deploy the Hsiung Feng II and III family of anti-ship, and land-attack cruise missiles.

The vessel will have a crew complement of 190, and carrying capacity for up to 250 marines and 233 fully armed troops. The vessel will also be able to take up to four 16 m mechanised landing craft (LCM) vessels, or up to two 36 m utility landing craft (LCU) vessels in its well dock.

The vessel will feature a flight deck that can accommodate one anti-submarine warfare variant of the S-70C helicopter, of which 18 are known to be currently in service with the RoCN.

“This configuration will be tested by the navy, and they will give us a feedback. Based on this feedback, we will design the second ship,” the CSBC representative added, confirming plans that Taiwan intends to eventually operate four ships in the class.

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The Republic of China Coast Guard Administration has placed an order for four 125 m vessels with local shipbuilder CSBC Corporation, a representative from the company told Jane’s on 27 September at the Kaohsiung International Maritime and Defence exhibition.

A contract for the vessels was signed in July 2018, according to Chung-Kang Hsu, from CSBC’s business development department. “The first vessel is scheduled for launch in January 2020,” he said, adding that the platform has been designed locally.
The design has an overall beam of 16.5 m and a design draught of 4.7 m. The vessel will have a top speed of 24 kt and a range of 10,000 n miles at the economic cruising speed of 15 kt. It will have an endurance of 28 days with a complement of 50.

The vessel has been designed with weight and strength considerations for two 30 mm remote-controlled weapon stations, one each in the forward and aft sections. It can also embark one medium-lift helicopter on its flight deck, two davit-launched lifeboats, and two rigid-hull inflatable boats (RHIBs).

The vessel will also be equipped with four water nozzles, two each in the forward and aft sections, giving it at-sea firefighting and non-lethal confrontation capabilities.

Besides accommodation for crew, the vessel has also been designed to embark up to 42 mission-specific personnel. “This could be personnel for scientific research purposes, government officials, or also officials from the navy,” he added.

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A U.S. Navy research vessel has docked in

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amid

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over trade and arms sales.

Taiwan’s official Central News Agency says the

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arrived in the southern port of Kaohsiung on Monday to refuel and make crew changes. It quoted Defense Minister Yen De-fa as saying its visit is “unrelated to military activity.”

China objects to all governmental and military contact between the U.S. and Taiwan, which it claims as part of its territory to be conquered by force if necessary.

In Beijing on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China was "expressing our solemn concerns to the U.S. side" over the visit.

China "opposes all kinds of military contacts between the U.S. and Taiwan," Lu said. The U.S. should "stop all forms of official exchanges and military interactions with Taiwan, and handle the Taiwan-related issues with caution," he said.

Though it's not the first time the Thomas G. Thompson has stopped in Taiwan, this visit comes during a particularly sensitive time in U.S.-China relations.

China has demanded the U.S. cancel a $330 million sale of spare parts and related support for Taiwan's U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets and other military aircraft. While Washington has no official relations with Taiwan, it is legally obligated to ensure it has the means to defend itself.

The arms sale was announced amid a trade feud fueled by U.S. accusations that China runs an abnormally large surplus with the U.S., engages in cyber-theft and coerces foreign companies into handing over technology.

That has led the U.S. to impose punitive tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports. Beijing has counterpunched with import taxes on $110 billion of American products.

The two have also feuded over Chinese weapons purchases from Russia and China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea — where the U.S. says a Chinese destroyer came aggressively close to a Navy ship late last month, forcing it to maneuver to prevent a collision.

China's relations with Taiwan are largely frozen because the president of the self-governing democracy, Tsai Ing-wen, refuses to concede to Beijing's demand that she recognize the island as a part of China. That's led Beijing to use its influence to narrow Taiwan's ability to participate in international society and increase its military threat toward it.

The Thomas G. Thompson is owned by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and operated in cooperation with the University of Washington.

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Taiwan has taken delivery of its first

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fighter jet, according to reports in local media.

The single-seat aircraft is the first of four Taiwanese Air Force F-16A/B fighters

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by state-owned Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC) to the F-16V Block 70 standard. The jet was handed over to the Air Force on Friday.

The remaining three aircraft are undergoing flight testing at AIDC and are scheduled to be delivered by the end of this year, according to local media reports quoting company officials. The four aircraft were inducted into the AIDC facility at Taichung for upgrades almost two years ago, with sources in Taiwan telling Defense News that unspecified software issues have delayed the upgrade program.

However, the delivery of the first aircraft to the Air Force’s 4th Tactical Fighter Wing at Chiayi will pave the way for Taiwan’s remaining 141 F-16s to be upgraded, with plans for AIDC to upgrade 24 aircraft each year under the $5.3 billion Phoenix Rising program. Two other Taiwanese jets have previously been upgraded by Lockheed Martin in the United States.

The F-16V upgrade sees the installation of the Northrop Grumman AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar, an active electronically scanned radar, to replace the older mechanically scanned set; new mission computers; improvements to the aircraft’s electronic warfare suite and avionics; and the integration of new precision-guided weapons.

In addition to Taiwan, regional F-16 operators Singapore and South Korea are upgrading their respective 60 and 134 aircraft to the F-16V standard, along with Bahrain and Greece. Slovakia is also acquiring 14 new-build F-16Vs from Lockheed.

Taiwan is also planning to develop an indigenous sustainment facility to conduct depot-level maintenance and repairs for its F-16 fleet, with the Taipei Times reporting that Taiwan and the U.S. have agreed to prioritize the development of the facility that will allow the island to become self-sufficient in meeting the F-16V fleet’s maintenance needs, as opposed to shipping the jets to the U.S. for major repairs.

The newspaper added that the Taiwanese government plans to allocate $50 million in industrial credit from the United States for its use, with another $450 million in credit reserved for construction planning and preparation. The amount will come from the $800 million industrial cooperation credit agreed upon as part of the Taiwanese F-16 upgrade program.

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• David Helvey says the self-ruled island ‘must have resources to modernise its military’
• Accuses Beijing of attempting to ‘erode Taiwan’s diplomatic space’ at defence industry conference

A Pentagon official is urging Taiwan to ramp up its defence budget to protect against potential attacks from mainland China.

David Helvey, US principal deputy assistant secretary of defence for Asian and Pacific security affairs, told a conference in Annapolis, Maryland on Monday that the self-ruled island “must have resources to modernise its military and provide the critical materiel, manning and training needed to deter, or if necessary defeat, a cross-strait invasion”.

Helvey said “Taiwan’s current efforts will falter” unless its defence budgets keep growing, according to a transcript of his remarks released by the US-Taiwan Defence Industry Conference on Tuesday.

The official also accused China of attempting to “erode Taiwan’s diplomatic space in the international arena while increasing the frequency and scale of [People’s Liberation Army] activity within and beyond the First Island Chain”.

The first island chain refers to the first chain of major archipelagos, including Taiwan and Japan, out from the East Asian continental mainland coast.

Helvey said that by stepping up Beijing's ability to strike with advanced equipment, including long range bombers, the PLA was trying to end the era of zero military conflict that had existed in the Taiwan Strait since 1949, when the mainland’s Communist Party won a civil war that drove the Nationalist government to the island.

“These coercive acts only make more difficult the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues in a manner and scope, and at a pace, acceptable to the people on both sides,” the official said.

Under the Taiwan Relations Act, the US has been selling arms to Taiwan to maintain the island’s self-defence capability as part of an overall effort to prevent the mainland from taking it over by force.

Helvey’s comments come four days after President Xi Jinping, during an inspection tour in Guangdong province, told the Chinese military region responsible for monitoring Taiwan and the South China Sea to “prepare for war”.

Defence Minister Wei Fenghe also vowed on Thursday not to cede “a single inch” of territory to Taiwan, which the mainland has consistently regarded as a wayward province, to be brought into line by force if necessary.

Wei is expected to meet US defence chief James Mattis in Washington next week. Pentagon spokesman Christopher Logan said in an email that Mattis has invited Wei to visit the US capital during the week of November 5.

Helvey told the defence industry meeting that the US and Taiwan both needed to update their thinking on arms procurement, planning and training to counter a potential strike against the island by mainland forces.

“These changes are essential if we are to look dispassionately at the military balance in the region and devise a way ahead that ensures Taiwan has the ability to resist coercion and deter aggression,” the Pentagon official said.

US President Donald Trump has approved two separate packages of arms sales to the island in less than 18 months. The first, valued at US$1.4 billion, came in June 2017, the second, worth US$330 million, in September.

Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, speculated on Sunday during a press conference that the US government would likely notify the US Congress of new arms sales to Taiwan, worth at least US$50 million, sometime before the end of this year.

The Washington-area business council is a non-profit group advocating for closer business ties with the self-governing island, focusing on defence procurement. The US is Taiwan’s sole arms supplier even though no formal diplomatic relations exist between the two.

Taiwan’s deputy defence minister, Chang Guan-chung, who led a Taiwanese delegation to the two-day Annapolis conference, declined to confirm whether a new arms deal with the US would occur this year.

York W. Chen, the deputy secretary general with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's National Security Council, told reporters the Taiwanese government would welcome future new arms sales by the US.

He also said Taiwan would welcome “normalised and multilevel” arms sales with the US based on a case-by-case review of requests for weapons purchases. A new system could result in more “frequent” sales of arms to Taiwan, Chen said.

The Pentagon already has advocated for establishing such a system for its arms sales to Taiwan. Randall Schriver, the US assistant secretary of defence for Asian and Pacific security affairs, was quoted by Taiwan’s Central News Agency this month as saying the US was moving towards a “more normal foreign military sales relationship” with the island.

China strongly opposes any US arms sales and official contact with Taiwan. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang last week urged the US “to correct its mistakes, stop any official contact and military ties with and arms sales to the Taiwan region”.

Meanwhile, Taiwan has continuously expressed a desire to acquire advanced American weapons. Its defence ministry has said it needs M1A2 Abrams battle tanks and has suggested it plans to acquire US F-35 fighter jets, saying it wants “new fighters capable of vertical or short take-off and landing and having stealth characteristics”.

Derek Grossman, a senior defence analyst with Rand Corp, said “Taiwan is certainly interested in acquiring the F-35 for the vertical/short take-off and landing capability it would provide its air force”.

Grossman said Taiwan’s interest in getting F-35s is driven by the accuracy of China’s short-range ballistic missiles, which could target the Taiwan air force’s runways in precision strikes to keep the island’s aircraft grounded.

“If tensions continue to persist in the US-China relationship, it’s conceivable Washington might ramp up arms sales beyond just once or twice a year,” Grossman said.

The Trump administration, however, “could alternatively dangle the prospect of cutting arms sales as a bargaining chip in broader policy discussions with China, whether on North Korea, trade, or the South China Sea”, Grossman said.

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• The two guided missile frigates offer superior anti-submarine performance than the island’s existing Chengkung-class frigates
• President Tsai Ing-wen ‘determined to safeguard the Republic of China in Taiwan as well as our free and democratic living style’

Taiwan’s navy has commissioned two former US Perry-class guided missile frigates to boost the self-ruled island’s anti-submarine defences, with the island’s president vowing not to back down in the face of growing military threats from Beijing.

The two frigates, PFG-1112 Ming Chuan and PFG-1115 Feng Chia, commissioned by President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday, are equipped with the American-made SQR-19 sonar system, giving them a far superior anti-submarine performance than the navy’s existing eight Chengkung-class frigates built by Taiwan, according to naval officers.

The frigates are also equipped with the MK13 guided missile launch system, designed to fire RGM-84 Harpoon Block II missiles as an anti-ship defence – the first such firing system used by any naval vessels and capable of attacking coastal and bayside targets, they said.

“Through the commission of Ming Chuan and Feng Chia, we want to send a clear message to the world … that we are not only devoted to strengthening our armaments but are determined to safeguard the Republic of China in Taiwan as well as our free and democratic way of life,” Tsai, commander-in-chief of the Taiwanese forces, said during a commissioning ceremony at the naval port of Zuoying in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan.

The two frigates, PFG-1112 Ming Chuan and PFG-1115 Feng Chia, commissioned by President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday, are equipped with the American-made SQR-19 sonar system, giving them a far superior anti-submarine performance than the navy’s existing eight Chengkung-class frigates built by Taiwan, according to naval officers.

The frigates are also equipped with the MK13 guided missile launch system, designed to fire RGM-84 Harpoon Block II missiles as an anti-ship defence – the first such firing system used by any naval vessels and capable of attacking coastal and bayside targets, they said.

“Through the commission of Ming Chuan and Feng Chia, we want to send a clear message to the world … that we are not only devoted to strengthening our armaments but are determined to safeguard the Republic of China in Taiwan as well as our free and democratic way of life,” Tsai, commander-in-chief of the Taiwanese forces, said during a commissioning ceremony at the naval port of Zuoying in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan.

Tsai said the commissioning of the two vessels was just another move to uphold the island’s determination to safeguard itself against the mainland’s repeated attempts to weaken the island’s sovereignty and sabotage regional stability and peace.

She said the island would make further efforts to boost its defences at a time when the mainland is using not only military threats but also less conventional means such as spreading disinformation and using social media networks to try to attack her government and the island’s industries.

Built in the 1980s and named USS Taylor and USS Gary when they were in the US Navy, the highly mobile frigates – equipped with the SQQ-89 undersea warfare combat system – were sold to Taiwan for US$190 million in 2015.

According to the Taiwan navy’s chief of staff, Vice-Admiral Lee Chung-hsiao, the ships’ SQR-19 sonar system reduces noise efficiently, enabling more accurate location of enemy submarines.

Delivered to Taiwan in May last year, the two vessels, which have gone through weapons fitting and testing in the past year or so, are among the many military purchases it has made from the United States in line with the Taiwan Relations Act, instituted by the US in 1979 to ensure proper defence for the island after Washington switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei.

Despite repeated protests by the mainland, US-Taiwan military ties have become ever closer as Beijing and Washington have become locked in a series of heated disputes over trade and diplomatic issues including the mainland’s military expansion in the Indo-Pacific region.

The American Institute in Taiwan, the US’ de facto embassy, said the US sent representatives to Thursday’s ceremony.

It said the frigates’ entry into service would “improve the island’s capability in current and future defensive efforts” as well as “contribute to political stability, military balance and economic progress in the Indo-Pacific region”, in line with US strategy there.

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