Taiwan's military is a paper tiger - a🧵
1/ For decades, we've been told that the Taiwanese military is a modern, western military capable of joint ops and standing up to the PLA. This is a lie.
2/ The reality could not be further from the truth. The ROC military in recent years bears far more resemblance to the Russian military than the American one.
3/ Let's get something out of the way: the Taiwanese military has NO wartime experience. Their last real fight was the 2nd Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958, 64 years ago.
4/ The modern ROC military is arrayed like so: volunteers form the core of the fighting force & conscripts serve as light infantry in the reserves for local civil defense.
5/ But the ROC reserves system is broken - @RANDCorporation has done an in-depth look at the Taiwanese reserve system here that I'll summarize:
rand.org/pubs/research_…
@RANDCorporation 6/ One main issue is that the majority of the reserves do not expect to return to their prior MOS, but as light infantry. And while there are theoretically 30 brigades of reserves, they majority do not expect to receive much artillery support.
7/ Reserve training is also abysmal. @PaulHuangReport did a fantastic if not terrifying summary of his personal experience in this thread - well worth a read:
8/ This means that the ROC military on invasion day will not be swelling up to the often touted number of 700,000 but remain at its current number of ~160,000
9/ But even among the Taiwanese volunteers, there are still serious issues: from manpower shortage to an institutional practice of hiding bad news from superiors
10/ Per Taiwanese media, frontline units have effective equipment levels between 60 to 80 percent. These are the units expected to bear the brunt of fighting
news.ltn.com.tw/news/politics/…
11/ Much of Taiwan's budget is also spent on procuring big ticket items, like the Yushan class LHD - 4 are planned, and 1 has been built - which is rightly criticized as a waste of money for an already underfunded force.
12/ The military's underfunding is by design b/c of to its historical role as the oppressive arm of the KMT during the martial law period
13/ @MoNDefense has also been cutting budget where it cannot be visibly seen: operation & maintenance - here are the US and the ROC side by side - the US spends 40% of its budget on O&M; Taiwan spends much less while operating similar equipment
14/ The reduction of budget for O&M means more of the burden falls to frontline units, which are already stretched thin as is.
15/ But the largest issue is the institutional issue of hiding bad news from superiors. Most egregiously, in the Joint Operations Command Center. A helicopter crash in June of this year was made aware to the JOCC AFTER a social media post went viral:
udn.com/news/story/109…
16/ In 2016, the JOCC did not learn about the HF3 misfire incident until a civil government official in Taipei disclosed it
17/ These instances are the tip of the iceberg of an institutional need for secrecy - and the tradition of corruption runs deep in the military:
taipeitimes.com/News/editorial…
18/ Much of this corruption is a result of the military being a descendant and retaining the worst excesses of Chiang's army, where the main emphasis is on cultivating personally loyal subordinates.
19/ The officer corps - by virtue of this heritage - is also largely a Waishengren good old boys club and exists almost as an institution of itself. To rise up in ranks means playing by this system - or as orientalists would say: guanxi (關係)
20/ This opens up ample room for abuse within the officer corps. Recently, a junior officer who killed himself after being subjected to hazing, & the case was swept under the rug until his mother managed to get in touch with Tsai
taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/ar…
21/ Morale is also an issue within the Taiwanese military, where the reality of service shatters the rose tinted glasses of both conscripts and volunteers. Conscription is frequently described as a "summer camp" or "waste of time"
22/ And though training may be better for volunteers, the insufficient funding places an undue burden on the frontline units, and troops often resort to stealing or using their own money to purchase parts in order to pass inspections.
23/ Taken together, the Taiwanese military faces: - a hollow reserves system - poor maintenance - institutional corruption & cronyism - inadequately trained conscripts - pervasive morale issue End of🧵
