Miragedriver
Brigadier
Taiwanese navy ships, Tuo-Jian (618) class and Pan-Shi class (532) joining in service.
Back to bottling my Grenache
Back to bottling my Grenache
Taiwan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter Gollevainen
- Start date
Zetageist
Junior Member
Yeah, that is what confused me. The retired F-16 ROCAF colonel specifically talked about those long rods at the rail-mounting of the wing-tip station as some sort of 'pods' for gathering intels. He then continued to talk about usually after the plane landed, he would walk to a big screen to view its playback or the intels gathered. I guessed he just tried to make something ordinary as a sensation for the television viewers.
joshuatree
Captain
Did they resolve the overweight issue? Or simply accepted the deficiency as is?
Skywatcher
Captain
A mechanical failure sends exactly zero signals to anybody. Though Beijing is contractually obliged to protest, of course.
Zetageist
Junior Member
Slow news week ... So back to the story of 2 F-18s landing at Tainan Airport:
US F/A-18 jets leave Taiwan airspace:
"The two F/A-18s were kept in hangars belonging to Air Asia Co (亞洲航空) at Tainan Airport."
I am not trying to make a conspiracy theory out of this, just an interesting read on its history. According to Wikipedia (I know it is not the best place for accurate info), Air Asia (Taiwan):
Media on both sides of the Strait sort of made a big deal out of this emergency landing because it marked the first time in 28 years that a U.S. military jet fighter ever touched down on Taiwan soil. Few years back, there were American military heavy helicopters in Taiwan helping with a disaster relief lifting equipment to disaster area, but their wheels never touched the Taiwan soil - according to Taiwan media. All landings and refueling were done on a nearby U.S. aircraft carrier.
Both F/A-18Cs are belong to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323 (VMFA-323, Death Rattlers). However, this is not the first time that VMFA-323 fighters visited Taiwan, as below ash tray photo has shown that VMFA-323 F-4Bs were stationed in Tainan, Danang (Vietnam), and Japan back in 1965-1966:
US F/A-18 jets leave Taiwan airspace:
"The two F/A-18s were kept in hangars belonging to Air Asia Co (亞洲航空) at Tainan Airport."
I am not trying to make a conspiracy theory out of this, just an interesting read on its history. According to Wikipedia (I know it is not the best place for accurate info), Air Asia (Taiwan):
Media on both sides of the Strait sort of made a big deal out of this emergency landing because it marked the first time in 28 years that a U.S. military jet fighter ever touched down on Taiwan soil. Few years back, there were American military heavy helicopters in Taiwan helping with a disaster relief lifting equipment to disaster area, but their wheels never touched the Taiwan soil - according to Taiwan media. All landings and refueling were done on a nearby U.S. aircraft carrier.
Both F/A-18Cs are belong to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323 (VMFA-323, Death Rattlers). However, this is not the first time that VMFA-323 fighters visited Taiwan, as below ash tray photo has shown that VMFA-323 F-4Bs were stationed in Tainan, Danang (Vietnam), and Japan back in 1965-1966:
This article is just calling for Taiwan to increase its defense spending to counter China. But it doesn't look at the economic reality that Taiwan is in. The problem for Taiwan is that its economy is losing competitiveness fast in the world economy. Over the past 15 years Taiwan's share of global trade has shrunk by 30%. Wages on Taiwan hasn't been increasing for more than a decade and the economy today is unable to create enough high paying "middle class" jobs for the young people of Taiwan. This is the result of the fact that Taiwan's economy is being squeezed between China on the one hand and South Korea on the other. On the higher end Taiwan is unable to compete with South Korea on technology and value and on the lower end its unable to compete with China on price. So while at the higher end South Korea is leaving Taiwan further and further behind on the lower end China is gobbling up more and more of her industry. And the reason why this is happening is because Taiwan doesn't invest enough in R&D. Taiwan is in a region with China, Japan and South Korea. Taiwan is economically and physically the smallest in the region. It spends about 3% of GDP on R&D while Japan spends about 3,7% of GDP on R&D and South Korea even spends more than 4%. China spends about 2% of GDP on R&D. Taiwan being much smaller than the others need to spend a higher percentage of its GDP just to keep up with the rest. But it isn't doing so and now they are falling further and further behind in the region. On top of that Taiwan with a population about 58 times smaller than China is also aging faster. Taiwan at the moment is able to sell 40% of her wares to China with favorable market access conditions and recieves about 3 million mainland tourist a year to help them goose up their economy. Taiwan economically is almost completely dependent on China. At this point the danger of Taiwan becoming a economic vassal of China is much more real than any possible invasion. And that is really the issue that the Taiwanese leaders need to adress. The loss of economic competitiveness is perhabs a bigger danger than military inbalance and war. Because on the current path war is a possibility but economic vassalship is a certainty. And as Taiwan looses more and more of her industry to China that also diminishes her ability to defend herself in the future. Taiwan should spend more on R&D to stretch the lead it has over China for as long as possible rather than more on military hardware. Its also something I believe we should do in Europe and America. Because our hi tech and heavy industries are loosing their competitiveness to China too.
Military funding and capability usually is correlated with a country's economy, population, geography, as well as unique circumstances such as geopolitical position and relations.
I think a bigger trend which many of these so called analysts are missing is that when the PLA's modernization is finally complete and commensurate with the PRC's economy, population, and geography, it will be many times larger and more capable than the ROC military through sheer scale. The scope and depth of capabilities that a fully modernized PLA will yield is something that the ROC military will find immensely difficult to compete with (putting it lightly), without substantially increasing its military funding as a proportion of GDP.
Of course, what ROC does have going for it is that the PLA won't be able to deploy all of its aircraft and ships to a single location during a Taiwan contingency as the PLA has more missions to perform as well, in each of its borders and seas (in the same way that the US can't deploy all of its naval forces and air forces to the western pacific in a westpac contingency due to its string of global commitments).
However I also think it won't be too many years until PLA air forces and naval forces in relative proximity (*) to ROC and will have a clear margin of superiority versus even the entire ROC military on a capability and/or tonnage basis.
(* Oh let's say, elements of SSF and ESF in terms of naval assets, and Guangzhou and Nanjing MRs as primary air force, 2nd artillery and logistics contributors along with some limited redeployment of elements from other MRs in support roles, with primary command from Beijing of course)
I think a bigger trend which many of these so called analysts are missing is that when the PLA's modernization is finally complete and commensurate with the PRC's economy, population, and geography, it will be many times larger and more capable than the ROC military through sheer scale. The scope and depth of capabilities that a fully modernized PLA will yield is something that the ROC military will find immensely difficult to compete with (putting it lightly), without substantially increasing its military funding as a proportion of GDP.
Of course, what ROC does have going for it is that the PLA won't be able to deploy all of its aircraft and ships to a single location during a Taiwan contingency as the PLA has more missions to perform as well, in each of its borders and seas (in the same way that the US can't deploy all of its naval forces and air forces to the western pacific in a westpac contingency due to its string of global commitments).
However I also think it won't be too many years until PLA air forces and naval forces in relative proximity (*) to ROC and will have a clear margin of superiority versus even the entire ROC military on a capability and/or tonnage basis.
(* Oh let's say, elements of SSF and ESF in terms of naval assets, and Guangzhou and Nanjing MRs as primary air force, 2nd artillery and logistics contributors along with some limited redeployment of elements from other MRs in support roles, with primary command from Beijing of course)
Skywatcher
Captain
Good luck paying for it.
With pensions and other social spending increases coming up due to Taiwan's aging population, they'll have to raise taxes to fund any meaningful military increase.
But you can't squeeze more money from the middle and working class, and the rich and corporations have the clout to block any increases at their end.