US delivers backlogged Stingers to Taipei amid China-Taiwan tension

The US has delivered a shipment of Stinger missiles and other military equipment to Taiwan which was originally approved in 2019, as Washington works to fulfill a backlog of nearly $19 billion in weapons sales to the island nation.

The US and Taiwan are alarmed that Chinese aggression towards the island nation — that Beijing claims as part of its territory — is a prelude to a wider conflict and are working to outfit the island with defence capabilities they say will deter a Chinese invasion.

According to a report in The Hill, citing State Department spokesperson, the shipment arrived in Taipei last week and is part of the $223.56 million weapons sale initially approved in July 2019.

Responding to the reports of the delivery of Stingers on 26 May, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning slammed the US for interfering in China’s internal affairs, calling the weapons delivery “extremely wrong and dangerous.”

According to a Wall Street Journal report, arms sales to Taiwan since 2019 include systems also being used in Ukraine, including Javelins, Stinger missiles, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), and howitzers.

Taiwan also signed an agreement in March for Harpoon anti-ship missiles, which are not scheduled to be delivered until at least 2026, the report cited officials as saying.

The weapons sales included more than 250 Stinger missiles — an anti-aircraft weapon favored for its light weight and capability to be fired from a soldier’s shoulder, which has proven to be a favored weapon for Ukrainian forces battling Russian aggression.

While Taiwan’s Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said earlier this month that President Joe Biden is expected to announce the first tranche of a $1 billion weapons transfer to Taiwan directly from Department of Defence stockpiles — and approved by Congress for 2023 — the spokesperson confirmed the Stingers that arrived in Taiwan are related to the earlier approved arms sale.

“In 2019, we notified a proposed [Foreign Military Sale] case to TECRO [Taipei Economic And Cultural Representative Office In The United States] for this system,” The Hill quoted the spokesperson as saying.

“As such, this case predates authorities included in Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act (TERA) as incorporated into the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act,” the spokesperson added.

China has continued to increase diplomatic, economic, and military pressure on Taiwan in recent years and has never ruled out trying to take the country by force.

Incursions into the country’s air defence identification zone have become a nearly daily commonplace since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August last year and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen visiting Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in California in April.

With inputs from agencies

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