Taiwan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter Gollevainen
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Skywatcher
Captain
Let's see, so $2 billion for 100 Abrams (and where are the spare parts for. That's $12 billion for 600 tanks. That's going to eat up the ROCA's share of procurement budgets for easily the next decade, at least.
The F-16V deal is lacking in the air to air missile department. Might be a bit of a problem if a ROCAF F-16V tries to square off with a J-20 in the future.
So Taipei will somehow become magically exempt from increasing cost inflation in communications technology?
Let me put it simply. If the ROCA spends $12+ billion USD on Abrams MBTs, what is it not buying then?
The ROCA is only just putting into place new mission variants of the CM-32. If it takes them 12 years to cough out a mortar carrier variant, then there are two possibilities. Either the ROCA does not have sufficient resources to deliver the fire support solution for light mechanized warfare in a timely manner, or the CM-32 builders are still severely incompetent.
It does become a burden if you want a professional military, as opposed to a mob 180k-230k ambulatory speedbumps. To have a modern, professional military, you must be able to pay them high salaries and matching benefits, and train and educate those every one in uniform to a high standard.
Taipei cannot keep such a large professional military in the long run, so they will either have to shrink it, or let the average quality decline further. This is due to two reasons: an aging population, which will raise pressures on government finances (pensions, ya see, and a declining tax base) and the MoD must raise personnel costs to match increased wages from the public sector, and Taipei has a law that mandates a debt ceiling of 40% (they are currently in the mid 30s range). Even if said debt ceiling was raised, a lot of the new debt would go to the problem of pensions (not to mention that ROC government bonds are in a somewhat precarious position geopolitically speaking, increasing the total government debt relative to GDP is going to do bad things to bond rates).
Exactly. The quality has suffered as we saw recently when the elite presidential honoured guards made a hash of things.
Also found this in the social media recently, not sure it's a representative of the current modern army.
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Deleted member 13312
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Framing each tank deal as being worth 2 billion is a bit rigid because being being the preliminary deal it includes certain equipments to set up Taipei's new fleet. Subsequent deals might not include things like ammunition or more heavy transport vehicles after they start to manufacture their own.
I don't really get it why you are so adamant trying to find out whether the deal includes spare parts. If they have got through the pains of ensuring that they have nearly all the basics like ammo, transport vehicles and repair vehicles that is pretty much a given.
And I will again say this, this deal must also be viewed in light of Taiwan's other procurement capability, and seeing that they are still going along nicely with other projects, I did say they are still doing well.
Taipei already makes their own aa missiles in the form of the Sky Sword series which afaik covers both WVR and BVR spectrum so I don't see a problem with that. We can argue on their real life effectiveness but that is a whole other matter completely.
Inflation, no. But price jacking by the supplier ? Maybe. Since Taiwan is already home to several companies that deals in communications equipment they can most certainly be able to deals with that.
You will have to ask them, I am not privy to what the ROCA is or not buying or think they should buy.
Again single variant of a 6x6 does not indicate possible failure for the entire series.Given Taiwan's small land mass, long range self propelled artillery naturally figures the least on their priority, heck their existing m109s can already cover nearly half the island depending on where they are based. And this is not accounting for other 120mm mortar carriers that are not 6x6 like the CM-22 which are already service so why should they rush to get another similar vehicle into production?
They already have 600 of them(6x6 in service with varying degrees of armament so they are covered for the light mechanized warfare.
They are already attempting to do so with various incements, the problem here is not fiscal but rather an aversion towards the military combined with a certain amount of fatalism. But that is a societal issue combined with poor foreign policy decisions by both Taiwan and it's foreign partners at large.
And an all volunteer force is really not an option for Taiwan given its situation, and in this at least they are in agreement.
True these are societal issues that Taiwan will eventually have to deal with. But for fairness sake Taipei will not be the only one who will have to deal with them in the region and they aren't even the worse ones , so any potential down shrinking of the military is not as terrible as it seems.
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Gun salutes for inauguration of president today.
Skywatcher
Captain
If there are no/little spare parts, then the MBT fleet becomes a bunch of 60 ton paperweights.
If Taipei decides to build its own heavy transport vehicles and manufacture its own 120mm munitions, then they'll end up paying even more than buying American.
That's the point. They're not doing well with the current projects- there's no room in the current budget trends for to accomodate the other existing projects; the naval build up, increased SAM acquisitions, not to mention bizarre white elephants like the Yun Feng supersonic LACM.
And can the Sky Sword series even be carried by F-16s?
It's not just a matter of worrying about price jacking, you have to do all sorts of certifications and quality assurance engineering that goes to the heart of modern communications systems (buying COTS comms for a 21st century military is asking for deserved trouble)
Logistics matter. Try fitting a M113 mortar carrier into the OOB of a 8X8 AFV formation.
M109 SPHs and 120mm mortars occupy completely different mission sets (for instance, 120mm mortars are assuredly not long range artillery by any measure). That's like asking why you can't use an AAA gun to fight off MBTs.
Incidentally, the Cloud Leopards are 8X8 AFVs.
You're missing something pretty obvious. The Mainland has scale (to the point that despite having only about 40% of the latter's GDP per capita, the PLA still spends more per soldier than the ROCAF does, and that's in nominal terms!), Taiwan does not.
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Deleted member 13312
Guest
If they included even ammunition and recovery vehicles in the deal then it is pretty much a given that spare parts are included. Most nations never bother to list out every single nut and bolt in their deals so why should this one be the exception? China too never bother to get into the details regarding every military deal it signed yet the receipant received the full package nevertheless.
Bases on what? Given Taiwan's political and economic circumstances, domestic production is not likely going to cost them significantly more then buying foreign.
Apart from the Yun Feng that is still in development, I don't see any other projects that Taiwan is currently engaged in that can be considered a "white elephant" or problematic.
They can be carried by the f5s and the IDFs so it is pretty resonable to say that the F-16 is capable of carrying them. Even if they can't Taiwan already have significant stocks of Amraams and sidewinders already. Not every fighter purchase has to come with missiles.
Certification and qualifications does not necessarily translates into vast cost increases. That depends on prudent project management and budgeting.
Remember that Taiwan does not have to deal with geographic issues that other nations have to deal with. So they can get away with having tracked vehicles mixed with wheeled ones. Plus if they have logistics supplies stored for the M113s then it will not be such a burden as one might think.
If Taiwan can get away with spending less per soldier and still maintain a sizeable force then it is actually a plus. I don't really get this notion whereby spending more money automatically equates to better results.
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Found this article on a new ROC Coast Guard ship.
Anping (CG-601) is the first of 12 locally designed and built 600-ton class catamaran patrol vessel. Jong Shyn Shipbuilding picture.
Taiwan Launched a 600 Tons Coast Guard Cataraman That Can Fire 16 ASM
Taiwanese shipyard Jong Shyn Shipbuilding launched a new 600 tons patrol vessel for the Coast Guard on 27 April 2020. Based on the ROC Navy catamaran corvette, the new patrol vessel can be fitted with up to 16x anti-ship missiles.
Anping (CG-601) is the first of 12 locally designed and built 600-ton class catamaran patrol vessel. Jong Shyn Shipbuilding picture.
Taiwan Launched a 600 Tons Coast Guard Cataraman That Can Fire 16 ASM
Taiwanese shipyard Jong Shyn Shipbuilding launched a new 600 tons patrol vessel for the Coast Guard on 27 April 2020. Based on the ROC Navy catamaran corvette, the new patrol vessel can be fitted with up to 16x anti-ship missiles.
Skywatcher
Captain
Whatever spare parts in that $2 billion contract probably isn't going to cover anything past ten years of operations (and the ROCA needs to buy at least a similar amount of spare parts for future Abrams purchases if the ROCA doesn't want to use them as pillboxes).
Economies of scale. That's why the Japanese Type 99 SPH costs much more than the M109A5.
Oh boy, where to start? There's the next generation DDG program for the ROCN, for starters. The hulls for the SSKs are larger than optimal for Taiwan Straits operations.
Actually, it's pretty unreasonable to expect the F-16 to carry Sky Sword missiles. To do that without Uncle Sam's say would require jailbreaking the F-16's avionics (and in doing so, would incur American wrath)
Spoiler: They don't.
US military grade comm and network systems have been going over budget (like everyone else) Why would Taipei be exempt?
Here's the gist of the deal for trade off between wheeled vs. tracked vehicles: the former is faster and usually less maintenance intensive, but the latter provides better cross country capability. So the tracked vehicles will slow down the wheeled formation, but there's no point in having the tracked vehicles around if the wheeled vehicles can't take advantage of the former's superior mobility.
M113s not a burden? Try telling that to the maintenance crew for the CM-32 battalion saddled with the M113 mortar carriers. Wehrmacht panzer divisions in early WWII went crazy trying to keep up with the logistics for multiple tank types (of differing nationalities to boot).
Actually, spending more money automatically equates to better results if that extra money is used for purposes like R&D, to develop and buy things like hypersonic missiles, very long range artillery, autonomous UCAS swarms, amphibious mineclearing robots, smart grenade launchers, things that the country spending less money can't hope to match in quality or quantity.[/QUOTE]