Taiwan Arms Shipment Delayed by Same ‘Accounting Error’ That Led to Ukraine Overestimate: Report

In May, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed that the Biden administration will take a significant step to shore up Taiwan’s defenses: Washington will use an emergency arms-transfer authority to send the nation weapons “in the near term,” he told Congress.

Several weeks have passed since that statement, which confirmed reports that go as far back as late April, without any apparent movement on that matter. This morning, CNN reported on the reason behind the delay: U.S. officials told the network that the holdup has resulted from an “accounting error.”

The planned arms shipment is particularly noteworthy because it’s aimed at fast-tracking the transfer of U.S. weapons to Taiwan in the face of continued Chinese military aggression. With the delivery of systems sold to Taiwan severely backlogged, the use of this channel, called Presidential Drawdown Authority, will involve the delivery of weapons to Taiwan already in U.S. stocks. This is the same mechanism through which the administration began to ship Ukraine Javelin and Stinger missiles, among other weapons, immediately ahead of the Russian invasion in February of 2022.

Taiwanese media has quoted experts from a government-backed think tank as speculating that Taipei could receive Javelins, Stingers, Harpoon anti-ship weapons, or Patriot missiles. The total value of the package is expected to be $500 million. The package will include “weapons that have been procured by Taiwan but have yet to be delivered,” Taiwanese defense minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said in May. The ongoing weapons-delivery backlog includes the sale of Harpoon missiles, which the State Department told Congress will only arrive sometime between 2025–2029.

While U.S. defense officials have repeatedly said that a conflict over Taiwan is neither imminent nor inevitable, there’s worry in Washington about growing Chinese military capabilities and general-secretary Xi Jinping’s increasingly aggressive bent. The weapons in the drawdown package are viewed as critical to developing “porcupine”-style defenses capable of thwarting a Chinese attack.

CNN’s report this morning suggests that an administrative error has slowed the process even further, though. U.S. officials told the outlet that the delay of “several months” has forced the Pentagon to reassess the value of the weapons that it intends to transfer to Taiwan — and that this error is similar to the one that led Washington to initially overestimate the value of weapons it has sent Ukraine. In short, Pentagon officials said in an explanation last month, the replacement costs of transferred weapons — and not their net book value — were considered. Washington was left with an additional $6.2 billion in authorized funds for future transfers to Ukraine as a result.

The Taiwan-related error was discovered “several months ago,” the officials told CNN, adding that it has already been resolved. “This is the first time we have done a Taiwan PDA and it has taken a bit longer than we would normally expect, partially because of the reassessment of some of the costs associated with the PDA,” a senior administration official told CNN. “That was not just a Taiwan issue, but of course the Ukraine one as well. But our expectation is that will soon have news on that.”

Since news of the intended package came to public attention in the spring, the administration has jumpstarted its high-level dialogue with China, with multiple U.S. officials visiting the country. The delayed drawdown package was reportedly slowed by a bureaucratic mishap, but even if the delay is unintentional in nature, the result is to fast-track détente with Beijing while leaving Taiwan in the lurch.