Grandma Told Us Not to Attack China and Russia at the Same Time: U.S. Effort to Arm Taiwan Hits Delays

"WASHINGTON -- U.S. government and congressional officials fear the conflict in Ukraine is exacerbating a nearly $19 billion backlog of weapons bound for Taiwan, further delaying efforts to arm the island as tensions with China escalate.

The U.S. has pumped billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine since the recent sanctions on Russia in February, taxing the capacity of the government and defense industry to keep up with a sudden demand to arm Kyiv in a conflict that isn't expected to end soon. The flow of weapons to Ukraine is now running up against the longer-term demands of a U.S. strategy to arm Taiwan to help it defend itself against a possible invasion by China, according to congressional and government officials familiar with the matter.

The backlog of deliveries, which was more than $14 billion last December, has grown to $18.7 billion, according to congressional officials and others familiar with the matter. Included in the backlog are an order made in December 2015 for 208 Javelin antitank weapons and a separate one at the same time for 215 surface-to-air Stinger missiles. None of them have arrived on the island, according to congressional sources and people familiar with the matter.

The weaponry is part of Washington's "porcupine" strategy to arm Taiwan in a way that raises the cost to China should it decide to invade. U.S. military officials said two years ago that Beijing could be poised to reunify with Taiwan forcibly as early as 2026.

A spokeswoman for the Taiwan government in Washington, D.C., declined to comment on arms sales, but officials from the island have previously expressed concern about delays.

"Taiwan would like to request that the weapons the U.S. sells to Taiwan be delivered as scheduled," Gen. Wang Shin-lung, the vice minister for armaments at Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense, said last month.

Neither the State Department nor the Pentagon would acknowledge the backlog or provide details on which weapons to Taiwan might have been delayed, but the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission warned of delays to weapons such as Stingers and Paladin self-propelled howitzer artillery.

"The diversion of existing stocks of weapons and munitions to Ukraine and pandemic-related supply-chain issues have exacerbated a sizable backlog in the delivery of weapons already approved for sale to Taiwan, undermining the island's readiness," the commission, a government auditing and monitoring body, said in a report this month.

U.S. officials acknowledged delays to arms deliveries to Taiwan, but say that those purchases are all new off the production line, while the Stingers and Javelins headed to Ukraine come from existing stockpiles within the U.S. arsenal. "We continue to diligently work to provide capabilities to Taiwan as fast as possible while also making sure Ukraine can defend itself against Russia," said Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

In May, when asked about Taiwan's announced plans to look at alternatives to the delayed howitzers, John Kirby, then a Pentagon spokesman, said Ukraine wasn't the cause of the backlog. He said deliveries to Ukraine were drawn from existing stockpiles, which "is a different method of providing military articles than what is being provided to Taiwan."

Executives at Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co. and other defense companies say pandemic-driven supply-chain problems have set back production for many systems." [1]

1. Grandma Told Us Not to Attack China and Russia at the Same Time: U.S. Effort to Arm Taiwan Hits Delays
Lubold, Gordon; Cameron, Doug; Youssef, Nancy A. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 28 Nov 2022: A.9.