Taiwan Slowly Gets Its U.S. Arms

Capacity strain shows in five-year wait for tanks it ordered and paid for

- JOYU WANG

TAIPEI-Taiwan hailed the arrival of its first state-of-theart American tanks last week, celebrating what it described as "the world's greatest war machine." Less prominently mentioned was the long wait that preceded the arrival of the 38 M1A2 Abrams tanks: Taiwan placed the order in June 2019, during President-elect Donald Trump's first term.

The Taiwanese military was to receive its first batch in 2022, replacing Vietnam Warera Patton tanks. But the U.S. missed that timeline by two years as the Covid-19 pandemic and new wars in Ukraine and the Middle East strained its defense industry.

Other delayed deliveries for Taiwan include F-16V jet fighters and TOW antitank missiles Now, as Trump prepares to return to the White House, Western and Taiwanese defense analysts say the backlog is likely to clear up somewhat.

For decades, Washington has been Taipei's most important military backer, supplying weapons to deter and defend against a potential attack by China. Beijing claims the island as its territory and hasn't ruled out using force to take it.

Beijing regularly protests announcements of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as interference in its sovereign affairs. But what has proven more effective in keeping advanced American weaponry out of Taiwanese hands has been U.S. supply bottlenecks.