A Ministry of National Defense initiative to obtain US-made Harpoon missiles is plagued by cost overruns, poor coordination with contractors and procedural irregularities, the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center said.
In a report released this month, the center said the ministry made changes to the program without resubmitting a proposal to the Executive Yuan, adding that such incidents “call [the program’s] propriety into question.”
In October last year, the US approved the sale to Taiwan of 100 Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems, a package comprising launch vehicles, 400 missiles and other components.
Screen grab from the US Pacific Fleet’s Facebook page
While the ministry planned to buy the equipment in separate batches from this year to 2025, it on Oct. 19 issued an update to the bid notice, saying that it intended to procure all of the systems, munitions and components in a single purchase, citing the rising military threat from China.
In separate documents submitted to the legislature in May and August, the ministry increased the program’s overall cost estimate from NT$52.3 billion (US$1.88 billion) to NT$86.6 billion, while the end date was moved from 2025 to 2030, it said.
The surge in estimated costs exceeded a 20 percent limit stipulated by regulations and should have triggered an automatic mechanism for the ministry to resubmit the program to the Cabinet, but it did not, it added.
Instead, the ministry gave the program to the Cabinet days before it was to submit the overall budget report, the report said.
Although the ministry claimed an urgent operational need for the missiles, its failure to make any plans to coordinate with defense contractors in Taiwan and the US over the deal could lead to the nation losing out on opportunities to obtain defense technologies, it said.
The center also highlighted the ministry’s failure to meet enlistment goals and added that some combat units are more than 20 percent understaffed while reporting a high ratio of volunteer soldiers who failed to meet standards.
As of August, Taiwan had 162,282 volunteer soldiers, which falls short of the 169,000 goal for the volunteer component of the military, the center said.
Since 2016, 2,588 troops were discharged from military service for failing to meet standards, which is 18.36 percent of all men and women who volunteer, it said.
Substantial ministry staff and funding had been consumed in connection to processing troops who were found to be unfit for service and compensating them where payouts are appropriate, it added.
The number of understaffed combat units and the high number of volunteers who left military service after being found to be unfit for service are concerning, it said.
The growth rate of the volunteer force has slowed annually from 5.88 percent in 2018 to 1.09 percent in the first eight months of this year, the report said.
The lukewarm growth of the all-volunteer military suggests that the government’s incentive package to encourage enlistment of career soldiers might not be working, it added.
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