The Obama administration informed Congress on Wednesday that it plans to upgrade Taiwan’s aging F-16 fighter jets, drawing strong condemnation from China which called it a “grave interference” in its internal affairs. China warned that the potential $5.3 billion US arms sale will harm its “core interests” in Taiwan and damage China-US military and security cooperation. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Taiwan was an “internal matter” that affected China’s territorial integrity and the national feelings of 1.3 billion Chinese people. “China urges the US to clearly understand the acute sensitivity and serious harmfulness of selling arms to Taiwan, and to treat China’s solemn stance seriously,” Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun said. The retrofit of 145 Lockheed Martin Corp F-16 A/B aircraft will give them essentially the same capabilities as late-model F-16 C/Ds that Taiwan sought to deter any attack, US officials told reporters ahead of the notification. In the US Congress, 47 of the 100 US senators and 181 of the 435 members of the House of Representatives have written to President Barack Obama since May to urge him to sell Taiwan at least 66 late-model F-16 C/D planes.
In Taipei, Taiwan’s defence ministry said the upgrade of its F-16s will contribute to regional peace by improving its defence capability in the face of what it called a continued threat from China. Taiwan would continue to press for 66 newer F-16s to replace its F-5 fighters that are more than 30 years old, the ministry said in a statement. Beijing deems Taiwan a renegade province and sees US arms sales to the self-ruled island as the top obstacle to improved ties between the US and China, now the world’s two biggest economies.
China has shown no sign of ending an arms build-up that is focused on Taiwan. Previous US arms sales to Taipei have riled Beijing, which has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.
Taiwan’s military supply options are limited to the United States, with other countries refusing to sell it weapons, fearing an angry Chinese response. The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in its notice that Taiwan had requested 176 state-of-the-art Active Electronically Scanned Array, or AESA, radar sets, in addition to a long list of advanced air-to-air missiles, laser- and GPS-guided bombs and other weapons systems for the F-16s sold by the United States in 1992. AESA radar “offers a significant capability that would be able to maintain Taiwan’s qualitative advantage” over currently deployed Chinese fighters, said Mark Stokes, a former Pentagon China desk chief who heads the Project 2049 Institute, an Asia security research group.
The Pentagon notice to Congress said Taiwan is seeking in the package 140 of the latest version of heat-seeking Raytheon AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles and 128 Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing systems, which let pilots fire on targets from multiple angles without turning their heads or the plane.
