The US gives the green light to the sale of more weapons to Taiwan

Published:

26 Oct 2024 13:57 GMT

The island is strengthening its weapons to better be able to confront any attack by mainland China.

The US State Department approved a new arms sales package to the authorities of Taiwan (China) worth $2 billion.

A release of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency detailed on Friday that these are the advanced NASAMS air defense systems and the equipment required for them to be operational. The island’s leaders requested three of these systems, three Sentinel radar units, 123 AMRAAM-ER extended range (air-to-air) missiles, two AMRAAM-C8 guidance platforms and four multifunctional information distribution systems.

The system, developed in Norway (it stands for Norwegian Advanced Surface to Air Missile System), has already been supplied to several countries and tested in Ukraine, but this would be the first delivery to the Chinese island territory.

The Reuters agency learned from an anonymous source in the US Administration that NASAMS is a new weapon for Taiwan and that Australia and Indonesia are the only countries currently using it in the Indo-Pacific region.

According to these data, the island is strengthening its weapons to better be able to face any attack by mainland China and as a form of response to the increasingly frequent military exercises around the Taiwanese coasts.

The main contractor for the new package would be RTX Corp.