Asia Defense | Security | East Asia

Taiwan’s New F-16s: Why They Still Matter

The Republic of China Air Force waited 20 years for these aircraft. What are they for?

Air Force Reserve Crews over Southern California with the 370th FLTS from Edwards Air Force Base provide aerial refueling from a KC-135 to a Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 aircraft for the Royal Bahraini Air Force in 2024.

The arrival of the first pair of the 66 F-16C/D Block 70 aircraft on order to the Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) has been a long time coming – and not just because of production delays. First sought as 66 F-16C/Ds under U.S. President George W. Bush, the request was blocked by his administration and remained unapproved under President Barack Obama, before the sale was signed off in 2019 during the first term of President Donald Trump. Yet their arrival comes after years of debate over whether Taiwan’s vulnerable air bases could sustain fighter operations in wartime, raising questions over what role the aircraft can realistically play.

Taiwan’s F-16 story begins in the 1970s. During that decade, it was quickly becoming clear that the island’s fleet of F-100 and F-104 combat aircraft was heading toward obsolescence. While agreement had been reached between Washington and Taipei for the co-production of the upgraded F-5E/F for the ROCAF, many U.S. officials themselves regarded additional F-5Es as inadequate as a long-term solution. Complicating any follow-on agreements, however, was the steady reconciliation between the U.S. and mainland China. 

In 1978, Taipei’s request for F-16s was dismissed out of hand, leaving the F-4 and additional F-5E/Fs as the main options. A decision that year settled on the latter. High-performance fighters again topped Taiwan’s arms requests the following year, but Washington maintained its refusal to supply the F-4, F-16, or F-18.

In December 1978, Washington announced that diplomatic recognition would shift to Beijing on January 1, 1979, and formally gave the one-year notice required to terminate the U.S.-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty, which became defunct on January 1, 1980. This appeared to close the door on a major new fighter sale, despite the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act specifying that it was U.S. policy “to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character,” although what sales that required would be determined by the President and Congress. 

Washington repeatedly calibrated Taiwan’s fighter access to its assessment of China’s capabilities and to the wider U.S.-China relationship. Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election campaign featured positive rhetoric toward Taiwan. However, after considering Taiwan’s requests for the F-5G (which would become the F-20) and the F-16/79 (a deliberately lower-performance export version of the F-16), the decision was once again made to reject the request and focus on the F-5E/F, as well as giving authorization for the transfer of used F-104 fighters from West Germany. Washington judged the F-5E/F qualitatively adequate against China’s then-current fighters.

Reagan institutionalized the arms sales problem in 1982, when the Third Communiqué between Washington and Beijing featured a pledge that arms sales to Taiwan would not exceed recent levels, with Washington stating that it intended to gradually reduce them over time, conditional on Beijing’s continued peaceful approach to the Taiwan issue. At the same time, the Six Assurances issued to Taipei sought to confirm that the U.S. had not agreed to set a date for ending arms sales, but the communiqué nonetheless remained part of the U.S.-China policy framework. At this point, Taiwan began the journey down alternative aircraft procurement paths, including what eventually became the F-CK-1 Indigenous Defense Fighter, produced with extensive assistance from U.S. industry.

However, the end of the Cold War once again changed the dynamic, and in September 1992, during his re-election campaign,  George W. Bush signed off on the purchase by Taiwan of 150 F-16A/B aircraft. The decision was in part justified by China’s purchase of Russian Su-27 aircraft. Domestic politics also favored the decision: General Dynamics built the F-16 in Fort Worth, and Bush announced the sale there during an election campaign in which Texas aerospace employment was politically salient.

Washington continued to approve substantial arms sales to Taiwan over the following decades. From 2006, however, Taipei’s campaign for 66 new F-16C/Ds repeatedly foundered amid changing U.S. concerns that included Taiwan’s own defense budgeting, cross-Strait stability and the broader U.S.-China relationship. The Obama administration instead approved a major upgrade of 145 of the ROCAF’s existing F-16A/Bs. Taiwan also continued to explore a more radical solution to its future fighter requirement: in March 2018, Defense Minister Yen Teh-fa said that future aircraft should ideally possess short-takeoff-and-landing capabilities, identifying the F-35B as one possible candidate. However, attention was increasingly shifting back toward new (and more obtainable) F-16s, and the Trump administration approved the sale of the aircraft the following year.

The backdrop to this was an increasing appreciation that the ROC would not be able to match the PRC on a system-for-system basis. This included combat aircraft, which were also thought particularly vulnerable as their reliance on large, fixed bases left them exposed to being destroyed or trapped on the ground – a concern that likely........

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