Do we still sell the Tigershark? LOL
Ping.
The sale of F-35 to Taiwan will drive the Chinese bat-sh!t crazy!
And it’s the perfect way to handle them.
F-35’s permanently based within 100 miles of multiple military assets in the South China Sea.
AND, to top it off we’ll be shipping them to South Korea and Japan too.
Given the world political picture, I don’t see this happening. It might be a US bargaining chip, though. Trump must convince the Chinese to help with North Korea and back off of their land claims regarding the confrontation with India. There are also trade disputes to negotiate.
Really, if I was running Taiwan, I’d try leapfrogging existing and planned technology by going heavily into drones. A partnership with Israel, the world’s largest producer of high tech drones, would be much more cost effective than a mere handful of ultra expensive, manned fighter planes.
Do we still sell the Tigershark? LOL
Not sure if this is a good move. China has been pressuring Taiwan for many years and they still consider the island of Taiwan to be “on their turf.” Right now, Taiwan is not in need of progressing its military as they are not in conflict. And they cannot start to compete with China militarily.
So providing them with just enough rope to hang themselves, may not be the answer. And China will not take too well to our assistance in this and may further their help to North Korea creating another pain in the veranda that will retard our abilities to straighten up our problems here at home.
rwood
Sounds like a good North Korea/China bargaining chip. All other issues in east Asia pale in comparison to stopping a nutjob from nuking a bunch of our cities.
its reasonable to assume that anything that the US sells to Taiwan will be replicated in short order by the PLA.