TAIPEI – The United States says it will supply radar equipment to Taiwan’s Air Force, a relatively marginal item less likely to anger China than the F-16 fighter jets the island’s President urged Washington to provide last week.
US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said yesterday that the sale included “defence services, technical data, and defence articles” for Taiwan’s air defence system, and radar equipment for the island’s Indigenous Defence Fighter jets. Crowley did not put a monetary figure on the deal or identify the American companies involved.
The US is obligated by law to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons. Taiwan’s Defence Ministry did not comment immediately on the transaction, but the US-Taiwan Business Council, a private advocacy group based in suburban Washington, called it “a small move”.
For years the island has been pressing the US to sell it 66 F-16 C/D fighter jets to help counteract a long-standing Chinese military buildup, giving Beijing the wherewithal to invade across the 160km-wide Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949 and the mainland still claims the island as part of its territory. It has threatened to attack if democratic Taiwan moves to make its de facto independence permanent.
Beijing objects strongly to any US military sales to the island on the grounds that they constitute interference in its internal affairs. Earlier this year it suspended defence exchanges with Washington after the US announced it would make available to Taiwan a US$6.4 billion ($9 billion) weapons package.
Some Taiwanese defence officials fear the threat of additional Chinese pressure has already convinced Washington to take the F-16 C/D sale off the table. However, they continue to hope the Obama Administration might agree to a substantial upgrade of the F-16 A/B fighters as a kind of consolation prize.
In contrast to F-16s, the Indigenous Defence Fighter at the centre of the new radar deal is widely regarded as a relatively unsophisticated aircraft, incapable of holding its ground against the fourth-generation fighters of the Chinese Air Force.
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