Category: Arms Sales Backlog

By Eric Gomez

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) released a document in June 2025 that reports on the status of several US arms sales to the Legislative Yuan (LY). This is the third such document that I have found in my work on the arms sale backlog, with previous iterations released in June and October of last year. These MND reports are very valuable sources of information about the status of US arms sales to Taiwan. The June 2025 report does not contain any major surprises, but it does offer some additional bits of information.

There can sometimes be delays of one or two years between an FMS case being notified to Congress and a LOA being signed. So, it is possible that many recent arms sales to Taiwan (there were seven notified to Congress in 2024) are not included in MND’s list because their LOAs are being negotiated.

The June 2025 edition of the MND arms sales implementation report indicates that there are 18 arms sales currently in progress, with 15 on schedule, 2 delayed, and 1 ahead of schedule. The two delayed arms sales are AGM-154C Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) guided glide bombs and F-16 Block 70 fighter aircraft.

The JSOW sale was notified to Congress in 2017 and is one of the oldest arms sales in the backlog. The MND report says the bombs were supposed to be delivered in 2023 but limited production capacity and delays in testing pushed this back by three years to 2026. The JSOWs are supposed to arm Taiwan’s older F-16A/B fighter jets, which completed a major upgrade in late 2023. The three-year delay would mean a total gap of nine years between congressional notification and final delivery for the JSOWs. Taiwan is only purchasing around 50 bombs.

Delays in the new production F-16 Block 70 aircraft are less severe, but still noteworthy. I have previously written about the F-16 Block 70 delays for Taiwan Security Monitor. The June 2025 MND report does not contain any new information on the timeline for delivery. The MND is confident that all 66 aircraft will arrive in Taiwan before the end of 2026, despite the first aircraft only rolling off the assembly line in March 2025. In other words, the MND claims that final delivery of the F-16s will not be delayed despite delivery of the first aircraft occurring over a year behind schedule.

Finally, the June 2025 MND report echoes reporting from other sources on early delivery of the second batch of 18 HIMARS launchers, which are now expected in Taiwan before the end of next year—one year ahead of schedule. The 18 HIMARS were notified to Congress at the end of 2022, which would mean a little less than a four-year gap between notification and final delivery. By comparison, Taiwan’s first batch of 11 HIMARS took four years from notification (October 2020) to final delivery (November 2024), so Taiwan has a slightly shorter wait time for a larger order. It will probably take until 2027 for Taiwan to receive all the HIMARS munitions it is purchasing, but for the purpose of the backlog dataset once all launchers are in Taiwan I will consider the case to be delivered.

By Eric Gomez and Joseph O’Connor

The backlog of US weapons that have been sold but not delivered to Taiwan did not see any major shifts in the month of May. The backlog’s total value remains $21.5 billion, with deliveries of $4.4 billion—split roughly evenly between Abrams tanks and ground-launched Harpoon anti-ship missiles—in progress. See Figure 1 for a visualization of the backlog by weapons category and Table 1 for an itemized list.

Harpoon Coastal Defense System (HCDS)
The largest asymmetric FMS case in the backlog is a purchase of 400 ground-launched Harpoon missiles, 100 launch vehicles, and 25 radar vehicles, valued at $2.37 billion. Earlier reporting from Taiwan’s press and the March 2025 annual update to SIPRI’s dataset on arms transfers suggested that components for this arms sale had started arriving in Taiwan, though there was some uncertainty about just how much was delivered.
The budget unfreezing report for the HCDS provides more details. Per the report, the first radar truck and five launch vehicles rolled off the production line in the first quarter of 2025. There was a bit of a gap between production and shipment to Taiwan. This first batch of vehicles arrived in Taiwan in late June 2025.

MQ-9B Unmanned Aircraft
A sale of four MQ-9B surveillance drones and two ground stations received Congressional notification in November 2020. When freezing funds for the MQ-9B purchase, legislators said they were concerned that the MND had plans to store all four aircraft in a single hangar.
The budget unfreezing report states that MND has adjusted its storage plan and will distribute the MQ-9Bs across more storage facilities to reduce their vulnerability to attack. The report anticipates that construction of the MQ-9B’s support facilities will be completed by the end of 2025. All four aircraft are expected to arrive in Taiwan sometime in 2026.

Field Information Communication System (FICS)
The $280 million FICS case had preciously little publicly available information after it was notified to Congress in December 2020, besides a press report from March 2022 claiming that delivery would occur sometime in 2025. The budget unfreezing report indicates that the FICS successfully finished system component testing earlier this year. Delivery of the first batch of systems is expected before the end of 2025, but it is not clear when the final delivery will occur.

High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS)
Taiwan had two FMS cases for HIMARS—an initial buy of 11 launchers and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) notified to Congress in 2020 and a plus-up of 18 additional launchers, guided rocket pods, and ATACMS in December 2022. In November 2024, the first batch of 11 launchers and several ATACMS arrived in Taiwan. The HIMARS cases are also cited as the only arms sale to Taiwan that is ahead of its original delivery schedule.
The budget unfreezing report provides more details about the pace of munitions deliveries for HIMARS. The report says that Taiwan should receive the remaining 18 launchers by the end of 2026, but deliveries of ATACMS and rocket pods could extend into 2027 given the large volume of munitions that Taiwan is purchasing. Additionally, Taiwan’s military successfully test-fired a HIMARS from its territory for the first time in May 2025.

Conclusion
Except for the secretive FICS, none of the information in the budget unfreezing reports was all that shocking or unexpected. While there are some deviations from earlier reported delivery timelines, none of these are significant. However, the budget unfreezing reports are a noteworthy example of transparency from the MND. This crop of reports is the result of a contentious political environment in Taiwan, but having a regular, publicly available reporting mechanism to keep the LY— and researchers— informed about arms sales delivery timelines would be valuable.
We at TSM will be tracking down and translating as many of these budget unfreezing reports as possible in the coming weeks.

By Eric Gomez

The Trump administration celebrated its 100^th day in office on April 30, 2025. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) were not one of the items that the administration trumpeted as it marked this milestone. That is not very surprising. While huge nerds like me and you reading this love to follow this stuff, arms sales are not usually high on any administration’s list of Things to Trumpet. But, because people like you and me exist, let’s look at Trump’s first 100 days of FMS cases.

Since this is Taiwan Security Monitor, let’s talk about Taiwan first. There were no FMS cases notified to Congress in Trump’s first 100 days, and there were no reports of major arms sales being delivered to Taiwan in April 2025. I assess the total dollar value of the backlog to remain at $21.54 billion— but there might be some good news for the backlog to report next month (I realize the irony of an arms sale backlog dataset suffering from a backlog of monthly posts). See Figure 1 for the breakdown of the backlog by weapons category and Table 1 for an itemized list.

There were two items of reporting out of Taiwan in April 2025 worth mentioning:

First, Taiwan’s Air Force announced that it would form an additional Patriot battalion as its inventory of interceptors grows. In December 2022, Congress received notification of an amendment to an older FMS case for Patriot systems. The amendment added 100 PAC-3 MSE interceptors and upgrades to launcher systems. Press reports and statements from Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense have consistently said that they expect all 100 PAC-3 MSEs to arrive by the end of 2026, but the April 2025 reporting is the first time where new military units have been mentioned.

Second, Taiwan’s indigenous submarine program missed its planned start time for sea trials, which were supposed to run from April to September of 2025. The relevant FMS case in the backlog are two cases for heavyweight torpedoes worth a combined $430 million. Accurate data on the delivery timeline for the torpedoes has been hard to find, but if a delay in sea trials leads to a delay in the submarine entering service, then it would not be surprising to see a knock-on delay in the torpedoes. Taiwan Security Monitor will keep an eye on this and report any developments as soon as possible.

Trump’s First 100 Days of Arms Sales

The Indo-Pacific and Europe have also received a substantial amount of FMS support from the Trump administration despite concerns about Trump’s treatment of US allies. Many of these FMS cases have been for munitions— the AIM-120 family of air-to-air missiles have been selling like hot cakes— but these also include some noteworthy major platforms such as a sale of 20 F-16s and related munitions to the Philippines for $5.5 billion and 175 Tomahawk missiles for the Netherlands for a little over $2 billion.

Given the processing times for FMS cases, it is possible that many of these cases being notified to Congress were already in the works before Trump took office, although as more time goes by this potential explanation becomes less likely. Trump was a big fan of arms sales in his first administration, however, and one of the Executive Orders in the first 100 days of his second administration is focused on reforming the arms sales process to speed up the delivery of weapons.

Conclusion

The world is still waiting to see what will be in the Trump administration’s first arms sale to Taiwan. As Taiwan Security Monitor has reported previously, there are rumors of a multi-billion-dollar package in the works, but both the dollar value and capabilities keep changing. Whatever ends up being in the eventual Taiwan arms sale will be an important bellwether, we at Taiwan Security Monitor will keep waiting for the announcement.

By Eric Gomez

The backlog of US arms sales announced but not delivered to Taiwan did not change in March 2025. As shown in Figure 1, the backlog remains $21.54 billion.

New SIPRI Dataset Reveals a Large Delivery in Progress

SIPRI released its annual update to the Arms Transfer Database in March 2025, which brings the data current as of the end of 2024. Tracking the delivery status of arms sales, to Taiwan or any other country, is a very difficult task. SIPRI’s dataset has been a valuable source of information for the Taiwan arms backlog project since its first publication in November 2023.

However, SIPRI’s data is also imperfect. The 2025 edition of the dataset, for instance, categorizes the sale of 11 HIMARS systems to Taiwan as partially delivered, despite the Ministry of National Defense (MND) confirming full delivery in late 2024. SIPRI is also missing two major Taiwan arms sales from its dataset: a plus-up of 18 additional HIMARS and 100 PAC-3 MSE interceptors for the Patriot air and missile defense system. In SIPRI’s defense, confirming the existence of these two arms sales was not easy. Because both cases were modifications to older arms sales, their notifications were published in the Congressional Record instead of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency’s website, which is a much more readily accessible source of information.

For the most part, SIPRI’s 2025 update comports with other information I collected in 2024 about the arms sale backlog, but there was one noteworthy development.

According to SIPRI’s dataset, Taiwan has started receiving components of the Harpoon Coastal Defense System or HCDS, a truck-mounted version of the Harpoon anti-ship missile. In October 2020, Congress received notification of a $2.37 billion sale of 100 HCDS launchers, 400 missiles, and 25 radar trucks. The HCDS case is the second-largest arms sale by dollar value in the backlog. In September 2024, Taiwan’s Liberty Times reported that some HCDS equipment had arrived in Taiwan, but I did not feel confident coding HCDS as partially delivered at that time because the Liberty Times reporting was not well detailed.

Based on SIPRI’s data, I feel confident in changing the HCDS sale to partially delivered. Like the Abrams tank sale, this partial delivery status is expressed by a different color in the Figure 1 pie chart. As a reminder, the dollar value of the Taiwan arms sale backlog will not be reduced until final delivery of the arms sale occurs because trying to estimate a dollar value for partial delivery would be too difficult and likely inaccurate. Partial delivery of arms sales worth more than $1 billion are displayed visually in Figure 1 and noted with yellow text in Table 1.

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For the full dataset, click below:

By Eric Gomez

There were no new US arms sales to Taiwan announced or delivered between January and February 2025. The backlog remains $21.54 billion.

Early Trump Arms Sales

February 2025 was a busy month in the world of foreign military sales (FMS) despite none going to Taiwan. The Trump administration notified Congress of nine FMS cases in February. Five of these cases, with a combined value of $10.4 billion, were for Israel.  

In three of the Israel arms sales, the Trump administration bypassed the standard Congressional review period for FMS cases by stating an emergency existed justifying an immediate sale. Normally, Congress would have either 15 or 30 days—depending on the recipient country, Israel’s period is 15 days—to issue a joint resolution of disapproval to block the arms sale. The Trump administration’s invocation of an emergency is legal under the Arms Export Control Act, which governs FMS cases, but drew condemnation from several members of Congress arguing that the administration cut Congress out of politically sensitive sales.

Between inauguration day and the end of February, Middle Eastern countries have been the recipient of eight out of ten FMS cases (Japan and Romania have one sale apiece over the same period). It will be interesting to see if this trend continues. While there appears to be a consensus around reducing US focus on Europe, the administration’s approach to the rest of the world is not settled. Much of the administration’s senior foreign policy team has talked about focusing more on China, but recent arms sales and developments in March 2025 suggest more attention on the Middle East at least in the near term.

Conclusion

February 2025 did not see any changes in the US arms sale backlog to Taiwan, but it did provide a peek into important issues that could impact the backlog. The Trump administration’s early emphasis on the Middle East for new arms sales raises questions about whether the administration’s actions will reflect its “China first” rhetoric. New rumors about a pending US arms sale to Taiwan suggest ongoing tension between Taiwan going all in on asymmetric defense versus securing Trump’s favor via the purchase of high-priced traditional capabilities.

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For the full dataset, click below: