According to Reuters, the United States plans to sell up to seven weapon systems to Taiwan at the same time, and Taiwan’s military experts believe that these weapon systems are very important and advanced, and will greatly enhance Taiwan’s defense and combat capabilities.
Taiwan’s famous military expert and former KMT legislator Lin Yu-fang said in a joint interview with the media on Thursday that the seven weapons the U.S. plans to sell to Taiwan are very important and advanced weapon systems that will greatly enhance Taiwan’s defense and combat capabilities.
He said, “The U.S. view is that, first, it can deter China from launching a rash military attack on Taiwan, and second, in case the deterrent fails and China invades Taiwan by force, Taiwan has enough strength to deal with China.”
Lin Yu-fang added that the U.S. does believe that war could break out across the Taiwan Strait, but does not want to intervene directly to avoid massive U.S. military casualties, something that previous U.S. presidents have wanted to avoid since the Vietnam War.
Reuters, citing sources with knowledge of the situation, said the United States plans to sell Taiwan weapons including mines, cruise missiles, and drones that would make it difficult to attack like a hedgehog.
At a seminar held Thursday by the National Policy Research Foundation, a KMT think tank, Hu Rui-zhou, deputy director of the Taiwan Center for Security Studies, pointed out that Beijing could choose various tactics to violate Taiwan in accordance with its intentions, capabilities, and timing, and flexibly adjust and control the strike force through individual applications or a combination of military, supermilitary, and non-military means to achieve the desired effect.
Hu also pointed out that Beijing strives to avoid U.S. military intervention and to achieve the goal of “the first battle is the decisive battle, the first battle will decide everything,” and to conclude Taiwan in the shortest possible time and with minimal battle damage.
After President Tsai Ing-wen took power, Taiwan’s main military strategy in the face of China’s threats has been to “defend and deter”, transforming purely passive deterrence into active defense, extending the battlefield to the Chinese coast in accordance with the concept of “battle force protection, coastal decisiveness, and beach annihilation”, and procuring a number of long-range offensive weapons from the United States.
Taiwan’s former Minister of National Defense and Secretary General of the Institute for Advanced Policy Studies (IAPP) Yang Nien-chu said at the conference that Taiwan is currently in the midst of a strategic confrontation between the U.S. and China, and that in the face of a military tug-of-war between the two powers, Taiwan must be very cautious in responding.
He said, “I think in the next few months, around the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea, the U.S.-China military tug-of-war will not weaken, but will continue to increase, and will rise. We can only fine-tune, we can’t take sides or make abrupt moves.”
Yang also spoke of Taiwan’s need for more experience and wisdom in judging the U.S.-China military-strategic confrontation and adjusting engagement guidelines and training plans to deal with China’s ever-changing, diverse, and voluminous tactical moves, as a wrong step will make it difficult to resolve an out-of-control situation.
On the 9th and 10th of this month, the Chinese military mobilized both the eastern and southern war zones of the navy and air force at different altitudes to fly over the southernmost tip of the strait centerline, and to cooperate with the navy ships to enter the southwest Taiwan air defense identification zone in batches to the southwest sea, to carry out cross-theater, cross-services joint combat exercises.
Taiwan media reports, the Chinese military exercises in the scope of about one-third of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, the Communist Party’s ships into the island of Taiwan about 90 nautical miles away.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense emphasized that it has a plan to respond to the exercise and called on the Beijing authorities to ask the PLA to exercise restraint, not to be a troublemaker, and to contribute to regional peace and stability.
In response to the latest reports of U.S. plans to sell arms to Taiwan, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense pointed out that military purchases under evaluation or negotiation are handled in a low-key and confidential manner, and are not disclosed to the public in accordance with established practice.
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