Taiwan should change its military thinking and figure out how to make sure it has the ability to safeguard continued peace and stability both across the Taiwan Strait and within the Indo-Pacific region, a US official said on Tuesday.
David Helvey, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs, made the remarks at the US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference in Annapolis, Maryland.
According to a transcript of the speech provided by the Ministry of National Defense, Helvey said that in strengthening its armed forces, Taiwan is developing sufficient conventional capabilities to meet the peacetime needs of a military in a rough neighborhood.
However, he warned that Taiwan could not “afford to overlook preparing for the one fight it cannot afford to lose.”
In the face of China’s growing military threat, Taiwan should respond by improving its national defense, which means innovation, smart investments and leveraging asymmetries to its advantage, he said.
To achieve that, the features should be incorporated into Taiwan’s need for a credible, resilient and cost-effective deterrent, Helvey said.
To be credible, Taiwan’s “acquisitions, training and doctrine” need to “address the vulnerabilities of a potential adversary that spends more and fields faster,” he added.
Resilience means that Taiwan’s forces and systems are maneuverable and can operate autonomously while facing cyber, electronic, missile and air attacks, Helvey said.
Being cost-effective means retaining conventional capabilities, but focusing on “research, development, procurement, and maintenance on affordable and scalable asymmetric capabilities that are integrated into a multidomain defense,” Helvey added.
“If Taiwan’s military makes these changes to its force structure, it is equally important that Taiwan continue to make progress on how it trains and organizes its forces,” he said.
“The [US] Department of Defense has been helping Taiwan to think through how to increase joint capabilities while operating in a decentralized environment,” which would enable Taiwan to deploy mobile systems without central command and control, Helvey said.
Given the capabilities the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could bring to bear in a blockade or outright amphibious invasion, including information control, Taiwan’s progress is key, he added.
Achieving that goal would require developing and empowering junior officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs), Helvey said, adding: “Leaders at senior levels must trust that their junior leaders — officers and NCOs — are capable of performing their mission.”
The changes in thinking, procurement, planning and training are needed because of the magnitude of China’s threat, he said.
“Taiwan cannot count on Beijing’s forbearance for its security,” Helvey said, adding that there is no indication that China is preparing to renounce the use of force to bring Taiwan into its fold, now or in the future.
The US Department of Defense’s National Defense Strategy has highlighted this concern, as China leverages military modernization, influences operations and predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to its advantage, he said.
The coast guard drove away 567 Chinese boats and seized seven illegally operating in Taiwanese waters in the first six months of this year, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. They mostly operated near Kinmen and Penghu counties, resulting in fines totaling NT$1.7 million (US$52,440), it said. Three ships — two near Kinmen County and one near Penghu County — were detained in January for illegally crossing the border, while one ship each was detained near Kinmen in February and Penghu in March respectively, it said. The ship seized near Penghu in January was the Yun Ao (雲澳), detained by the CGA’s
The entire Alishan Forest Railway line is to reopen for the first time in 15 years on Saturday, with tickets to go on sale at 2pm today. The historic railway from Chiayi to Alishan (阿里山) is finally set to reopen after the completion of the final No. 42 tunnel, Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office Deputy Director-General Chou Heng-kai (周恆凱) said. It is to run on a new timetable, with four trains daily, he said. The 9am train is to depart from Chiayi Railway Station bound for Shizilu Station (十字路), while the 10am train departing from Chiayi is to go all the
FLU CONTINUES: Hospitals reported 101,091 visits for flu-like illnesses last week, while 68 severe cases and 16 flu-related deaths were also reported, the CDC said The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported 932 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and 64 related deaths for last week, adding that the number of people who had contracted new SARS-CoV-2 subvariants KP.2 and LB.1 has increased. The number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 increased from 815 in the previous week to 932 last week, while 90 percent of the 64 deceased were aged 65 or older, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. JN.1 was still the dominant variant among local and imported cases in the past four weeks, while KP.2 was the second-most common, Lin said. Cases with the LB.1 subvariant
Beijing’s recent provocative actions against the Philippines in the South China Sea were partly meant as a “dress rehearsal” for the invasion of Taiwan, former US deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger said at a Heritage Foundation forum in Washington on Tuesday. Beijing’s blocking of a Philippine resupply mission on June 17 with unprecedented violence had multiple implications. “What they’re doing is trying to demonstrate that they can blockade, create a sense of futility and discredit the idea that the United States is going to help not only the Philippines, but by extension Taiwan,” Pottinger said. Pottinger was referring to a clash