Eric Gomez
Eric Gomez and Benjamin Giltner
In October 2024, Congress received notification of two new arms sales for Taiwan, and the Ministry of National Defense (MND) confirmed the final delivery of Javelin anti-tank missiles. The net value of the US arms sale backlog to Taiwan increased by $1.86 billion, bringing the backlog’s total value to $22.39 billion.
Figure 1 shows the current composition of the backlog by category of weapons system. Toggle between the tabs of Figure 2 to see how the composition shifted from September to October 2024.
All US arms sales to Taiwan in 2024—including the last five in a row—are for asymmetric capabilities best suited for fighting off a Chinese invasion, showing that US arms sales to Taiwan are heading in the right direction. This recent focus on asymmetric capabilities means that the proportion of the arms backlog represented by traditional capabilities is less than 50 percent for the first time since January 2024 when we started releasing monthly updates to this dataset.
Per Table 1, which shows an itemized list of capabilities in the backlog, the proportion of traditional capabilities, asymmetric capabilities, and munitions is now 48.6 percent, 39.6 percent, and 11.9 percent, respectively. Put differently, the United States is selling better types of weapons to meet Taiwan’s most pressing security threat, which is good news for Taiwan’s self-defense despite a growing backlog dollar value.
New Air Defense Sales
The most significant development in October 2024 was congressional notification of two new arms sales for asymmetric air defense systems for almost $2 billion—$1.16 billion for three National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) and $828 million for an unspecified number of mobile radar systems.
NASAMS is a ground-based air defense system that can use multiple types of missiles against aerial drones, cruise missiles, helicopters, and fixed-wing aircraft. The United States has sent Ukraine a handful of NASAMS batteries, » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/taiwan-arms-backlog-october-2024-update-new-air-defense-sales-javelin-delivery