Thanks for your comments. It’s true that both Russian and Ukrainian forces have continued to use armor, but Taiwan has limited funds available to re-equip its forces, and these should be better spent trying to acquire more anti-air capabilities to give its existing tanks and other forces more survivability or more drones to threaten any Chines armor that is able to land.
All militaries struggle to not fight the last war, but to spend $2 billion on American tanks I think it strongly suggests that procurement decisions are being spent on demonstrating a closeness with the US that is not worth the trade-off.
It’s unclear to me why you think the procurement of tanks would demonstrate more of a closeness to the US than any other weapons system purchased from the US? It’s a weird kind of trade-off indeed if they can choose between the US-made patriot launchers (as you suggest) or the US-made Abrams tanks, and they go for the tanks despite a clear military inferiority? I honestly don’t follow the reasoning here.
Hi Hakon,
Thanks for your comments. It’s true that both Russian and Ukrainian forces have continued to use armor, but Taiwan has limited funds available to re-equip its forces, and these should be better spent trying to acquire more anti-air capabilities to give its existing tanks and other forces more survivability or more drones to threaten any Chines armor that is able to land.
All militaries struggle to not fight the last war, but to spend $2 billion on American tanks I think it strongly suggests that procurement decisions are being spent on demonstrating a closeness with the US that is not worth the trade-off.
It’s unclear to me why you think the procurement of tanks would demonstrate more of a closeness to the US than any other weapons system purchased from the US? It’s a weird kind of trade-off indeed if they can choose between the US-made patriot launchers (as you suggest) or the US-made Abrams tanks, and they go for the tanks despite a clear military inferiority? I honestly don’t follow the reasoning here.