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RoCAF (Taiwanese AF) facing fighter jet shortage by 2020 as China threat grows

CougarKing

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More on the coming fighter shortage already mentioned in passing at the China superthread about China's capabilities being boosted with Su35s and S400s with IRBIS-E radars.

Taipei Times link

Taiwanese air force faces plane shortage by 2020

MUST HAVE:By 2020, the number of fighter aircraft in the air force would decrease by 70 percent without the acquisition of new F-16s, a US congressional report says

A US congressional report released this week makes it clear that, without the acquisition of new aircraft, the Taiwanese air force risks being a shadow of itself by 2020 and incapable of meeting the challenge it faces in the Taiwan Strait.

The annual report by the Congressional Research Service, entitled Taiwan: Major US Arms Sales Since 1990 — which Defense News has called “required reading inside Taiwan defense circles and among US defense officials working with the island’s military” — provides a detailed analysis of US arms sales to Taiwan over more than two decades.

The section on F-16 jet sales provides the greatest shock. By 2020, it says, the number of fighter aircraft in the air force would drop by 70 percent without the acquisition of new F-16s as it retires near-obsolete F-5s and some ageing Mirage 2000s, whose spare parts are reportedly extremely costly.

Even if Taiwan were to acquire the 66 F-16C/Ds it has been requesting since 2006, the total number of aircraft would still have dropped by 50 percent by that time, the report says.

In numerous requests to the US over the years, Taiwan had made it clear that it understands the severity of the shortage it faces within the next decade and it has argued that it is seeking both upgrades for its 145 F-16A/Bs sold in 1992 and new aircraft.

In a letter of request submitted in November 2009, Taiwan wrote that the upgrade program would by necessity be “in parallel to, and not a substitute for, new F-16C/D” aircraft.

On a visit to the US in September last year, Vice Minister of National Defense Andrew Yang (楊念祖) called the F-16C/Ds and diesel-electric submarines — another program that has been stalled for several years — the most urgent systems for Taiwan to acquire, not the F-16A/B upgrades.

A notification to Congress in September last year included a US$5.2 billion upgrade package for the F-16A/Bs, but not the new F-16C/Ds. The Ministry of National Defense says the retrofits, which would be budgeted over a period of 12 years, would bring the F-16A/Bs’ capabilities to 80 percent of those of the F-16C/D, with some capabilities even surpassing the F-16C/D.

However, the package does not include new engines, meaning that their operational range would remain more limited than that of F-16C/Ds. The program also does not include airframe work, leaving unaddressed the problem of ageing aircraft that have now been in service for two decades.

According to Lockheed Martin, a retrofit would not start until 2017, after five years of preparatory work. Once it begins, it would take one squadron, or about 24 F-16A/Bs, out of service at a time over a period of five years.

Furthermore, the program would take three years longer than a program to sell the same number of 145 new F-16C/D fighters, which it says would take seven years.


During that same period, a number of Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDF) will also be out of service for mid-life upgrades, further compounding the quantitative crisis.

More recent events, which are not covered in the CRS report, seem to indicate that Taiwan is having second thoughts about running the two programs in parallel. Earlier this month, legislators and senior military officials said that the F-16A/B upgrades were more expensive than expected and that Taiwan might not have the financial resources to do both. Some also argued that rather than purchase the new F-16C/Ds, Taiwan should instead bid for Lockheed Martin’s F-35B, a problem-plagued aircraft that is still under development.

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Air forces in all western countries seem to be in a somewhat urgent need of recapitalization.  Even the all mighty USAF has entire fleets of grounded aircraft - some of those problems due to aging aircraft, airframe fatigue issues, etc.

If Taiwan really wants to recapitalize its airforce, maybe it should go shopping elsewhere? 

If the US is hesitant to sells arms to Taiwan for obvious political & long term economic reasons...Europe has quite a few phenominal 4Gen and 4.5Gen fighters that could be looked at.  France has been pretty aggressive in selling the Rafale, that might be a good place to start?

Sure, they wont be getting a state of the art 5Gen fighter...but they wont be doing that by acquiring some C & D model F-16s anyhow.
 
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