The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has deployed at least 57 warplanes, 19 naval vessels and a military drone to the Taiwan Strait in a fresh eruption of anger over reports the United States is seeking to produce weapons on Taiwan.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said that, in the three-day period leading up to Thursday morning, 19 Chinese warplanes had flown across the Taiwan Strait median line. The ministry is closely monitoring the actions of the Chinese army, it said, and will announce at 6 am Friday Taiwan-time an updated count of the sorties involved.
The incidents happened as 25 US defense contractors attended the Taiwan-US Defense Industry Forum in Taipei on Wednesday morning.
Steven Rudder, a retired United States Marine lieutenant general, said during the forum that he and the group of American defense contractors “have been on a mission to have a shared vision of a free, open, resilient, and inclusive relationship not only between the US and Taiwan, but also for the region.”
“Some US defense contractors are considering including Taiwan in their supply chains,” said Julian Kuo, a Taiwanese political scientist and a former member of the Legislative Yuan. “Although it may not involve any transfer of high technology, it is possible that Taiwanese firms will produce ammunition for US firms.”
Kuo said that, with Japan planning to add more than a hundred fuel and munitions depots on the Ryukyu Islands, the US may also establish tens of arms factories in Taiwan. He said such a plan is necessary because it will be difficult to transport ammunition from the Philippines to Taiwan once a war breaks out in the Taiwan Strait.
He said Taiwanese firms lack the experience of designing weapons but they are capable of producing parts for US weapon makers.
On Wednesday, the China Daily, an English newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), published an editorial titled, “US ups the ante in dirty game but should be forewarned.”
The Chinese version of the editorial was republished by other state media on Thursday with a headline “It is a dangerous step if the US produces weapons in Taiwan.”
“US officials have arranged for a delegation of 25 arms dealers to visit Taiwan from Tuesday apparently to explore the possibility of manufacturing weapons, mainly drones and ammunition, on the island, and ostensibly to support its secessionist-minded leader Tsai Ing-wen’s pro-independence agenda,” writes the author of the article.
“By constantly supplying weapons to Ukraine, the US has failed to deliver weapons to Taiwan on schedule,” he says. “By manufacturing weapons in Taiwan, the US arms dealers as well as the US administration can bypass a lot of problems to sell arms to the island.”
He says the US has crossed a line and that its moves pose a grave challenge to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. By allowing the US arms dealer delegation to visit Taiwan, the Biden administration is “playing with fire” and will ultimately burn itself, he says further.
He adds that the nasty American behavior could change cross-Strait relations or Sino-US ties forever.
Military drones
In March 2019, Taiwan ordered four MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) for about US$600 million. The US State Department approved the deal in November 2020. The manufacturer describes the Guardian model as a “maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft.”
The deal may have grown smaller in the interim and the drones in question seem to have been changed from the SeaGuardian to the SkyGuardian, a plane that its manufacturer says can deliver persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Defense Post reported on Tuesday that the US Air Force had ordered four MQ-9B SkyGuardians for Taiwan but the order’s size was capped at $217.6 million. The GA-ASI will also supply Taipei with two ground control stations, spare parts and other support equipment.
Lee Shih-Chiang, head of the Taiwanese Defense Ministry’s Department of Strategic Planning, said Thursday that the four drones will be completed in 2025 but the following six months of training will be conducted in the US, instead of Taiwan, due to cost concerns.
Tsao Chin-ping, general officer of Taiwan Air Force, said all the four drones and related equipment will arrive in Taiwan by 2027 and be ready for use six months later.
Taiwan’s Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said Taiwan ordered 66 units of F-16V fighters from Lockheed Martin in the US but the delivery of the first batch of the jets has been delayed to the third quarter of 2024 from the last quarter of this year as production was affected by the pandemic.
On February 7 this year, Taiwan’s National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) unveiled a series of domestically made attack drones, including one similar to the American AeroVironment Switchblade 300. The NCSIST said it has partnered with private companies to build prototypes of its drones but it did not name its partners.
China’s reactions
Following an April 11 Japanese media report that 25 US defense contractors would send their representatives to Taiwan to discuss joint production of drones and ammunition. Taiwanese media reported on April 26 that Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies and AeroVironment would be among the delegates.
“US arms dealers are accustomed to inciting confrontation and conflict and taking advantage of opportunities to make money from wars, and the US government is also accustomed to protecting them,” Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson of the Taiwan Affairs Office of China’s State Council, said on April 26.
Zhu said that, over the past six years, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had colluded with the US and recklessly purchased US weapons at high prices for a total of US$22 billion. She said Taiwan compatriots are now tied to the “Taiwan independence” chariot.
She said the DPP is not protecting Taiwan but harming and destroying it.
On the same day, the PLA sent a TB-001 military drone to fly around Taiwan. Taiwan said its Sky Bow anti-ballistic missiles at Chihhang Air Base were placed on full alert with some fighter jets taking off on April 27. On Wednesday of this week, China’s BZK-005 drone was seen flying around Taiwan.
Prior to this, China’s Ministry of Commerce said in February that it had added Lockheed Martin Corp and Raytheon Missiles & Defense to its “unreliable entities list” as they sold arms to Taiwan. It ordered the two firms to pay a combined fine of 99 billion yuan (US$14.4 billion) but it was ignored.
The ministry said last month that it had strengthened its curbs by banning the duo from having any trade with Chinese companies. It claimed that the two firms would suffer from failing to obtain Chinese parts and rare earth.
Read: Raytheon, Lockheed take a balloon war hit in China
Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3