Money, weapons and secret meetings: What the Pentagon is doing to arm Taiwan

Last fall, during a House Armed Services Committee hearing , the Pentagon came with a message: Help us help Taiwan.

The year before, Congress had for the first time allowed the Defense Department to ship its own stocks to the island nation — up to $1 billion each year. But lawmakers didn’t offer funding to replace those stocks. To some in the Pentagon, it was like being asked to donate to a food bank without a grocery budget.

So as lawmakers quizzed witnesses about how to better support Taiwan, officials repeated their request for funding.

“There is no money,” Ely Ratner, head of Pentagon policy for the Indo-Pacific region, said during the 2023 hearing.

But there is now: In April, Congress passed a $95 billion defense bill, with about $4 billion in potential Taiwan aid. Nearly half of that chunk is for replacing donated stocks.

The challenge now is for the Pentagon to deliver.

This week, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin flew to Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue, a security forum that draws leaders from across the region and beyond. His schedule includes a meeting with his counterpart in China, which recently ran large military exercises around Taiwan — a rogue breakaway province in the eyes of leadership in Beijing.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 9, 2024, about the Biden administration's fiscal 2025 budget request for the Pentagon, which includes supplemental funding for Taiwan. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

As Austin travels, the Pentagon’s system used for sending aid to Taiwan is working through another cycle. To accelerate that process, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks had formed a senior integration group for the Asian nation in 2022. The secretive group, which gathers a cross-section of Pentagon leaders, met last week, according to a congressional aide.

Defense News spoke to sources in Congress, the Pentagon and think tanks, as well as former government officials, to understand the future of U.S. support to Taiwan. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity, either because they weren’t permitted to talk to the press or were discussing sensitive topics. Collectively, they described a moment of urgency for both sides — to harden Taiwan’s defenses and to prove that the Pentagon can quickly act when given the chance.

“The whole idea is for these guys [Taiwan] to … deter, and if deterrence is not an option, to be able to hold their own for a period of time,” a senior American defense official said. “Waiting until after the fact is not necessarily helpful.”

‘We have the authority’

Months before Ratner testified, Austin visited Capitol Hill for a different hearing . Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, asked the secretary about the Pentagon’s new ability to draw down stocks for Taiwan.

“We have the authority,” Austin said. “We’ll need the appropriations as well.”

Around the time Austin spoke, the Defense Department was using that authority to plan its first round of aid. The president signed this package — valued at $345 million — in the spring though it wasn’t announced until the summer, and the administration didn’t identify the weapons included.

This left $655 million worth of its own stocks that the U.S. could still send. For a time, the Pentagon considered providing more and started planning another package, congressional aides and former officials told Defense News.

But it never happened.

“As we started to build some of the options for subsequent drawdown tranches, it just got harder and harder institutionally,” one former defense official said. “There was a lot of friction because the bureaucracy felt they were being spun into a full cycle of work without any money.”

Taiwanese soldiers launch a Javelin anti-tank missile during a live-fire exercise on the island in September 2022. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

Most of this friction came from the services, according to this former official and a second congressional aide. In particular, the Navy and Air Force were concerned that sending more equipment would harm America’s own military readiness in the Pacific.

The U.S. government doesn’t recognize Taiwan as an independent country and won’t officially commit to its defense. Still, they share close ties and work together on a long list of arms Taiwan has ordered from American companies — including $19 billion in foreign military sales.

U.S. President Joe Biden said multiple times early on in office that America would aid Taiwan if the island comes under attack. Indeed, China has prepared for U.S. involvement during military exercises, as Ratner noted in his testimony last fall.

The concerns over readiness aren’t overwrought. Were China to attack Taiwan and the U.S. to join the fight, America would likely be short on many of the weapons that U.S. Indo-Pacific Command says it needs.

Later in the year, according to the first congressional aide and another source familiar with the discussions, Austin froze Taiwan packages amid a lack of replenishment money from Congress. The choice, according to multiple sources, went against the preference of the White House and some in the State Department, who preferred the U.S. send more packages.

‘A million different things’

Because drawing down stocks is the fastest way to arm U.S. partners, the moratorium halted short-term aid to Taiwan. The choice also belied the importance senior Pentagon leaders had given the issue.

In late 2022, according to multiple sources who cautioned they couldn’t recall the exact date, Hicks formed a senior integration group for Taiwan, known in the Defense Department as SIG-T.

Its purpose is to focus all the relevant leaders in the Pentagon on a single issue — in this case, support for the island nation. It includes membership from the services, Indo-Pacific Command, acquisition and sustainment offices, policy offices, and other entities in the Defense Department. They meet regularly and report to Hicks.

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks briefs media during a news conference at the Pentagon in September 2021. (Staff Sgt. Brittany A. Chase/U.S. Defense Department)

When it was formed, there had only been two other such groups — one for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and another in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This was the first time the Pentagon used the model for a partner not at war.

The Defense Department has not publicly spoken about the group. However, Gen. CQ Brown mentioned it in written testimony provided last year during his hearing to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff .

In a statement to Defense News, a spokesman for Hicks didn’t acknowledge SIG-T and declined to discuss how the Pentagon coordinates support to Taiwan, except to say that it follows the government’s decades-long policy toward the island.

The benefits of the group are twofold: It brings the Pentagon’s offices responsible for Taiwan aid to the same table, and it ensures that table includes Hicks, who can overcome the sluggishness of bureaucracy.

But the second congressional aide said the group’s emphasis on material support has involved opportunity costs. Preparing Taiwan to defend itself is an enormous task, one that goes far beyond hardware. It would need to prepare stockpiles of medical equipment and food as well as fortify infrastructure. The aide argued that the group’s focus on drawdowns, which were eventually paused, meant losing time on these related problems.

“At the end of the day, with Taiwan, there’s a million different things that we should be doing at the same time,” the aide said.

That criticism is less relevant now, given the $4 billion included in the national security supplemental passed in April.

Of the $1.9 billion funding for replenishment, the top priority is to replace stocks sent last year, multiple sources said. Because new equipment costs more — the markup is about 20% for weapons sent to Ukraine, per the Pentagon — the Defense Department has closer to $1.5 billion than $2 billion to send new kit.

This aid will likely move faster, since the Pentagon already has a set of priorities. Drawdown packages rely on homework done by Indo-Pacific Command, which has sent the Pentagon a list of what Taiwan needs the most.

The top goals in this list, unlike those on order via foreign military sales, are for smaller-end assistance, such as munitions, mines, drones, training and sustainment, according to multiple sources.

Troops prepare to load American-made Harpoon AGM-84 anti-ship missiles in front of an F-16V fighter jet during a drill at Hualien Air Base on Aug. 17, 2022. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

“It’s not really the level of spending that would allow you to purchase a lot of new major platforms,” said Randy Schriver, who led Pentagon policy for the Indo-Pacific region under the Trump administration and now runs the Project 2049 Institute think tank.

The other half, or $2 billion, included in the supplemental is for foreign military financing. This cash assistance helps Taiwan buy military equipment, but does not help speed up the slowly moving $19 billion worth of U.S. arms that Taiwan has already ordered — an invoice that mainly includes large platforms like F-16 fighter jets.

“It’s going to take a very long time for that [financing] to turn into actual capability,” said Zack Cooper, who studies the Indo-Pacific region at the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

Last week, after a speech from Taiwan’s incoming president, China launched a bout of military drills around the island, calling them “punishment” exercises.

U.S. officials condemned the drills, which ended over the weekend. But the military activity was a reminder of how fast the situation around Taiwan can escalate as well as the challenges the U.S. government faces in regard to the island.

The first issue is logistical. Taiwan has a smaller military than that of the United States, and that limits how much aid it can absorb. Estimates vary on how much the island can usefully accept per year, but Cooper said the dollar value of this limit could be as low as $500 million.

Another issue is strategic. During the Trump administration, the government took a firmer approach to Taiwan’s defense planning, multiple sources told Defense News. In the past, the military preferred to buy large platforms, such as fighter jets and tanks, and the U.S. used to defer to those orders. But it doesn’t anymore.

Instead, Washington is now urging Taiwan to take an “asymmetric” approach, or one focused almost solely on denying China’s ability to invade. Some in Taiwan chafe at this strategy because it gives them fewer options when China uses tactics that fall short of an actual war — like scrambling fighter jets in the island’s airspace.

The Taiwanese guided-missile destroyer Ma Kong, left, monitors the Chinese guided-missile destroyer Xi'an, right, near the Asian island nation on May 23, 2024. (Taiwan Defense Ministry via AP)

The other challenge is political.

Sino-U.S. relations suffered after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., visited Taiwan in 2022. China severed military talks, and when Austin attended the Shangri-La Dialogue last year, his sole interaction with the Chinese defense minister was a handshake and brief exchange of words.

Since a summit between Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last fall, the relationship has improved — or at least plateaued. But it’s still fragile.

Meanwhile, some in Washington have grown increasingly concerned about a short-term conflict with China and are calling for the U.S. to surge defense spending in the Pacific, including aid to partners like Taiwan.

“If you have a democracy that’s so critical to us and many of the other countries in the world that [are] facing an existential crisis in single-digit years, what more would you do?” said retired Rear Adm. Mike Studeman, former chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence.

The balance between hardening these defenses and reassuring China is a delicate one. But it’s not like America’s partner in question doesn’t have practice, said Rupert Hammond-Chambers, head of the US-Taiwan Business Council.

“They’ve been living with this threat for decades,” he said.

Correction: A previous version of this story erroneously described the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Financing program, which is essentially cash assistance.

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

去年秋天，在众议院军事委员会的一次听证会上，五角大楼传达了一个信息：帮助我们帮助台湾。

前一年，国会首次允许国防部向这个岛国运送其储备物资——每年高达10亿美元。但议员们没有提供资金来补充这些储备。对五角大楼的一些人来说，这就像被要求在没有食品预算的情况下向食品银行捐款一样。

因此，当立法者们询问证人如何更好地支持台湾时，官员们再次提出拨款请求。

“没有钱，”五角大楼印太地区政策负责人伊莱·拉特纳在 2023 年的听证会上说。

但现在情况有所不同：今年4月，国会通过了一项950亿美元的国防法案，其中约有40亿美元可能用于援助台湾。这笔款项中近一半将用于替换捐赠的库存。

现在的挑战在于五角大楼能否兑现承诺。

本周，美国国防部长劳埃德·奥斯汀飞往新加坡参加香格里拉对话，这是一个汇聚亚太地区及其他地区领导人的安全论坛。他的行程包括与中国国防部长会晤。中国近期在台湾周边地区举行了大规模军事演习——在北京领导层眼中，台湾是一个“叛离的省份”。

2024年4月9日，美国国防部长劳埃德·奥斯汀在参议院军事委员会作证，谈及拜登政府2025财年五角大楼预算申请，其中包括对台湾的补充拨款。（图片来源：Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images）

在奥斯汀访问期间，五角大楼用于向台湾提供援助的系统正在进行新一轮的调整。为了加快这一进程，国防部副部长凯瑟琳·希克斯于2022年成立了一个高级整合小组，负责对台援助工作。据一位国会助理透露，这个由五角大楼各级领导人组成的秘密小组上周举行了会议。

《防务新闻》采访了国会、五角大楼、智库以及前政府官员，以了解美国未来对台湾的支持。许多受访者要求匿名，要么是因为他们未被授权接受媒体采访，要么是因为他们讨论的是敏感话题。他们一致认为，目前对双方而言都存在紧迫性——既要加强台湾的防御，又要证明五角大楼在有机会时能够迅速采取行动。

一位美国高级国防官员表示：“这样做的目的是为了让台湾方面能够起到威慑作用，如果威慑行不通，也要能够在一段时间内保持自保能力。事后诸葛亮未必有用。”

“我们有这个权力”

在拉特纳作证的几个月前，奥斯汀曾到访国会山参加另一场听证会。参议院军事委员会资深成员、密西西比州共和党参议员罗杰·威克尔向这位部长询问了五角大楼向台湾调拨库存的新能力。

“我们有这个权力，”奥斯汀说。“但我们也需要拨款。”

在奥斯汀发表讲话前后，国防部正利用这项授权计划第一轮援助。总统在春季签署了这项价值3.45亿美元的援助方案，但直到夏季才正式公布，而且政府当时并未透露其中包括哪些武器。

这意味着美国仍有价值6.55亿美元的库存可供调拨。据《防务新闻》报道，国会助理和前官员透露，五角大楼一度考虑提供更多物资，并开始筹划另一项援助计划。

但这从未发生过。

一位前国防官员表示：“随着我们开始制定后续几期裁军方案，制度上的困难也越来越大。由于官僚机构感觉他们被卷入了一整套没有资金的工作中，摩擦不断。”

2022年9月，台湾士兵在岛上进行实弹演习时发射了一枚标枪反坦克导弹。（图片来源：Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images）

据这位前官员和另一位国会助理透露，大部分摩擦都来自军方。特别是海军和空军担心，派遣更多装备会损害美国在太平洋地区的军事战备。

美国政府不承认台湾是一个独立国家，也不会正式承诺保卫台湾。尽管如此，美台关系依然密切，双方在台湾向美国公司订购的大量武器方面开展合作，其中包括价值190亿美元的对外军售。

美国总统拜登在就职初期曾多次表示，如果台湾遭受攻击，美国将提供援助。事实上，正如拉特纳去年秋季作证时所指出的，中国已在军事演习中做好了应对美国介入的准备。

对战备的担忧并非杞人忧天。如果中国进攻台湾，美国也加入战斗，美国很可能缺乏印太司令部声称需要的许多武器。

据国会第一助理和另一位知情人士透露，当年晚些时候，由于国会未能追加拨款，奥斯汀冻结了对台包裹的寄送。多位消息人士称，这一决定违背了白宫和国务院部分官员的意愿，他们更希望美国寄送更多包裹。

“无数种不同的事情”

由于削减库存是武装美国伙伴国的最快途径，暂停对台援助的决定也导致短期援助停止。这一选择也掩盖了五角大楼高层对该问题的重视程度。

据多位消息人士透露（他们也谨慎地表示记不清确切日期），2022 年末，希克斯组建了一个台湾高级整合小组，国防部称之为 SIG-T。

其目的是让五角大楼所有相关领导人集中精力关注一个问题——在本例中，即支持这个岛国。成员包括来自各军种、印太司令部、采购和保障办公室、政策办公室以及国防部其他机构的代表。他们定期开会并向希克斯汇报工作。

2021年9月，美国国防部副部长凯瑟琳·希克斯在五角大楼举行的新闻发布会上向媒体通报情况。（美国国防部参谋军士布列塔尼·A·蔡斯摄）

该组织成立之时，此前仅有两个类似的机构——一个用于应对伊拉克和阿富汗战争，另一个则是为了应对俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰。这是五角大楼首次将这种模式应用于非交战伙伴。

国防部尚未公开谈论过该组织。然而，CQ·布朗将军在去年竞选参谋长联席会议主席的听证会上提交的书面证词中提到了该组织。

希克斯的一位发言人在接受《防务新闻》采访时，没有承认SIG-T的存在，也拒绝讨论五角大楼如何协调对台支持，只是表示这遵循了政府数十年来对台政策。

该小组的好处有两方面：它让负责对台援助的五角大楼各部门坐到了一起，并确保希克斯也参与其中，从而克服官僚机构的迟缓。

但第二位国会助理表示，该组织对物资支持的重视造成了机会成本。帮助台湾做好自卫准备是一项艰巨的任务，远不止于提供硬件。它还需要储备医疗设备和食品，并加固基础设施。这位助理认为，该组织专注于撤军（最终暂停了撤军），这意味着在这些相关问题上浪费了时间。

“归根结底，对于台湾问题，我们应该同时做无数不同的事情，”这位助手说道。

鉴于4月份通过的国家安全补充拨款中包含了40亿美元，这种批评现在显得不太相关了。

多位消息人士称，在19亿美元的补给资金中，首要任务是替换去年运抵乌克兰的库存。由于新装备成本更高——据五角大楼称，运往乌克兰的武器价格上涨了约20%——国防部用于采购新装备的资金更接近15亿美元，而非20亿美元。

由于五角大楼已有一系列优先事项，这项援助可能会更快到位。撤军方案依赖于印太司令部所做的前期准备工作，该司令部已向五角大楼提交了一份台湾最迫切需求的清单。

据多方消息来源称，与通过对外军售订购的物资不同，这份清单中的首要目标是规模较小的援助，例如弹药、地雷、无人机、培训和维护。

2022年8月17日，在花莲空军基地的一次演习中，士兵们准备在一架F-16V战斗机前装载美制AGM-84“鱼叉”反舰导弹。（Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images）

“这笔支出水平不足以购买很多新的大型平台，”兰迪·施赖弗说道。他曾在特朗普政府时期领导五角大楼的印太地区政策，现在运营着“2049计划研究所”智库。

补充拨款中的另一半，即20亿美元，用于对外军事融资。这笔现金援助有助于台湾购买军事装备，但并不能加快台湾已订购的价值190亿美元的美国武器的交付速度——这笔订单主要包括F-16战斗机等大型平台。

“要把这些（资金）转化为实际能力，还需要很长时间，”美国企业研究所智库研究印太地区的扎克·库珀说。

上周，在台湾新任总统发表讲话后，中国在台湾岛周围展开了一系列军事演习，并称之为“惩罚性”演习。

美国官员谴责了这些周末结束的军事演习。但此次军事活动提醒人们，台湾局势升级的速度有多快，以及美国政府在台湾问题上面临的挑战。

首要问题是后勤保障。台湾的军事实力远逊于美国，这限制了它能够吸收的援助规模。对于台湾每年实际能够接受的援助金额，各方估计不一，但库珀表示，这一上限的美元价值可能低至5亿美元。

另一个问题是战略层面的。据《防务新闻》多位消息人士透露，在特朗普执政期间，美国政府对台湾的国防规划采取了更为强硬的态度。过去，台湾军方倾向于采购战斗机和坦克等大型平台，而美国也通常会尊重这些订单。但现在情况已不再如此。

相反，华盛顿现在敦促台湾采取“非对称”策略，即几乎完全专注于阻止中国入侵。台湾一些人对这种策略感到不满，因为当中国采取一些尚未达到真正战争程度的战术——例如派遣战斗机进入台湾领空——时，这种策略会减少台湾的选择余地。

2024年5月23日，台湾导弹驱逐舰“马空”号（左）在台湾附近海域监视中国导弹驱逐舰“西安”号（右）。（台湾国防部供图，美联社发布）

另一个挑战是政治方面的。

2022年，时任众议院议长、加州民主党人南希·佩洛西访问台湾后，中美关系恶化。中国中断了军事会谈，去年奥斯汀参加香格里拉对话时，他与中国国防部长唯一的互动是握手和简短的交谈。

自去年秋天拜登与中国领导人习近平举行峰会以来，两国关系有所改善，或者至少趋于稳定。但这种关系仍然很脆弱。

与此同时，华盛顿的一些人士越来越担心与中国发生短期冲突，并呼吁美国增加在太平洋地区的国防开支，包括对台湾等伙伴国家的援助。

“如果你的民主制度对我们以及世界上许多其他国家都至关重要，而这些国家在短短几年内就将面临生存危机，你还能做些什么呢？”退役海军少将、前海军情报局局长迈克·斯图德曼说道。

加强这些防御措施与安抚中国之间的平衡很难把握。但美台贸易全国委员会主席鲁珀特·哈蒙德-钱伯斯表示，这并不是说美国的这个伙伴没有这方面的经验。

他说：“几十年来，他们一直生活在这种威胁之下。”

更正：此前版本对五角大楼的对外军事融资计划进行了错误描述，该计划本质上是现金援助。

诺亚·罗伯逊是《防务新闻》的五角大楼记者。他此前曾为《基督教科学箴言报》报道国家安全新闻。他拥有弗吉尼亚州威廉斯堡威廉与玛丽学院的英语和政治学学士学位。