The U.S. announced weapons sales to Taiwan on Wednesday totalling $11.1 billion.
The State Department approved eight different packages: 82 HIMARS rocket artillery systems with ammunition and support, 60 M109A7 Paladin gun artillery systems with ammunition and support, ALTIUS-700M and ALTIUS-600 loitering munition systems, tactical mission network software, 1,050 Javelin anti-tank missiles, 1,545 TOW anti-tank missiles, AH-1W Cobra helicopter repair support and Harpoon anti-ship missile repair support.
HIMARS, the Paladins, the TOW and Javelin missiles and the Altius drones are “all items under the Special Budget for Strengthening Defense Resilience and Asymmetric Warfare Capabilities,” Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence announced this morning. The Special Budget is a commitment by Taiwan to spend $40 billion in supplementary spending on defense over the next eight years.
The packages appear to be “a lot of second tranches of equipment Taiwan already has,” said Joe O’Connor from Taiwan Security Monitor, an organization at George Mason University that tracks Chinese and Taiwanese military developments. “The inclusion of the first tranche of M109A7 Paladins shows that Taiwan still wants those systems despite delaying buying them,” he added. Taiwan had previously purchased 40 new Paladins in 2021, but after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that order was canceled and replaced with a purchase of 18 HIMARS.
“These sales are a lot of munitions and asymmetric systems at once, and at a much higher price tag” than former president Joe Biden, whose biggest sale was NASAMS at $1.16 billion, O’Connor wrote via direct message on social media. But, he cautioned, “it’s hard to infer a broader trend” about U.S. support for Taiwan.
“This Administration has been very clear that the enduring U.S. commitment to Taiwan continues, as it has for over four decades, and we continue to evaluate all available tools to ensure Taiwan has the capabilities it needs to deter threats and defend itself,” said a statement provided by a spokesperson for the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy. “This is a routine case to support Taiwan’s continuing efforts to modernize its armed forces and maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”
Although President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) made a large splash last month with his announcement of a $40 billion special budget, the money is not strictly an uplift as it fits within already announced spending increases, and the actual projected special budget spending in 2026 is $6 billion. However, much of the $11 billion in sales just announced would be amortized over multiple years.
The HIMARS and the Paladins purchases total just over $4 billion each. For HIMARS, the sale includes 420 M57 Army Tactical Missile Systems, 756 M31A2 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System-Unitary pods, 447 M30A2 Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System-Alternative Warhead pods, as well as 39 M1152A1 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles and 45 International Field Artillery Tactical Data Systems.
Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, or GMLRS, are pods of six GPS-guided rockets with a range of approximately 75 kilometers. Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, are much larger guided missiles, one to a pod, with a range of approximately 300 kilometers.
For the Paladins, the sale includes 4,080 Precision Guidance Kits, and 42 International Field Artillery Tactical Data Systems, as well as 60 M992A3 Carrier Ammunition Tracked Vehicles and 13 M88A2 Recovery Vehicles.
Taiwan plunged into a quiet constitutional crisis this week after Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) refused to countersign a law after parliament overrode his earlier veto. That move falls against the backdrop of a wider brewing concern that parliament isn’t going to pass the 2026 defense budget next month, which would increase defense spending to 3.3% of GDP. The legislature has twice blocked a separate bill for the $40 billion special budget from being placed on the agenda this month.
“Taiwan’s constitutional framework is under attack, and partisan confrontation has become extremely severe, creating significant uncertainty about the passage of the defense budget,” said Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷), a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator. The DPP, the party of President Lai, does not hold a majority in Taiwan’s parliament. A Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) counterpart was approached for comment but declined.
“I support and affirm this U.S. arms sale as a concrete show of support for Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities,” Chen said in a statement provided by his office, adding that “with sufficient defensive strength, Taiwan can reduce the risk of miscalculation and help safeguard peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and the broader region.”
There was a substantial uptick in Chinese military activity around Taiwan yesterday, with 40 aircraft sorties, 26 of which crossed the Median Line in the middle of the Taiwan Strait, and eight navy ships detected.
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