Which Expensive US Weapons Is Taiwan Rethinking After the Iran War?

The brief ceasefire that halted the U.S.-Israel-Iran war on April 8—after fighting that began on February 28, 2026—has left Taiwan's military with a set of uncomfortable conclusions about weapons it has already bought or is counting on. American and Israeli forces deployed some of the most advanced equipment in the Western arsenal against Iran, yet fell short of a quick victory while sustaining significant losses from Iranian ballistic missiles and suicide drones. Because many of the weapons used by U.S. forces are either already in Taiwan's inventory or on order, their battlefield performance has become a subject of intense scrutiny inside Taiwan's military establishment. According to sources with knowledge of those assessments, the results have prompted serious second-guessing—and, in several cases, a readiness to change course.

A military source told Storm Media that the Patriot missile system—long the cornerstone of Taiwan's U.S.-sourced air-defense procurement—emerged from the conflict with a mixed but not disqualifying record. Setting aside the cost-per-intercept question and one widely noted episode in which a salvo of eight or nine PAC-3 missiles failed to bring down an Iranian hypersonic missile, the overall intercept rate for PAC-3 and PAC-3 MSE missiles against non-saturating attacks was, the source said, far better than the five-percent figure circulating in some reports. Performance against ballistic and cruise missiles, in conditions short of full saturation, was "not bad at all," the source assessed. Given that the PAC-3 is the central element of the multilayered T-Dome air and missile defense architecture Taiwan is building, plans to procure more than a thousand PAC-3 rounds are expected to continue unchanged.

Other high-priced acquisitions fared far worse. Several weapons that Taiwan has already paid for, and whose capabilities were heavily promoted, performed well below expectations in the Iranian theater—badly enough, sources say, to alarm senior Taiwan military officials. One source acknowledged that even equipment that has been paid for and cannot be returned must be scrutinized against Taiwan's limited defense budget: "You can be taken for a ride once, but if we keep buying more of something that has been proven ineffective, internal resistance will be very strong."

The acquisition, ranked by Taiwan military reviewers as the single most wasteful and least useful item to emerge from the war is the MQ-9B Sea Guardian drone. The first two of four aircraft on order were delivered in the United States in March 2026 and are due to arrive in Taiwan in the third quarter; the remaining two are scheduled for delivery in 2027. The full package—four aircraft, two ground control systems, spare parts, and related equipment—costs $467 million, or roughly NT$14.85 billion. On a per-unit basis, each MQ-9B runs to at least $55 million..

The MQ-9B is a derivative of the MQ-9 Reaper, and U.S. forces deployed significant numbers of MQ-9s over Iran and adjacent waters for reconnaissance and strike support throughout the conflict. Even though Iran's air-defense network was heavily degraded by U.S. airstrikes from the opening days of fighting, 24 MQ-9s were shot down between February 28 and the April 8 ceasefire. At a minimum unit cost of $30 million for the base variant, that represents at least $720 million in drone losses alone—with limited battlefield returns to show for it.

A Taiwan military source said the MQ-9B shares the same basic configuration and flight characteristics as the MQ-9, and its vulnerabilities are comparable. The aircraft offers enhanced maritime surveillance capability, endurance exceeding 30 hours, and a suite of electro-optical, infrared, and synthetic aperture radar sensors capable of tracking surface and ground targets. But its wide wingspan, relatively slow airspeed, and absence of any stealth capability make it easy to track and engage with modern air-defense systems. In high-intensity combat, its survivability is low.

The source was direct about the implications for Taiwan. If Iran—whose air-defense infrastructure was severely damaged before it managed to shoot down two dozen MQ-9s—could do so with relative ease, then the People's Liberation Army, whose surface combatants routinely carry medium- and long-range air-defense missiles, would have little difficulty destroying Taiwan's MQ-9Bs. U.S. combat experience also shows that the MQ-9 family is vulnerable to electronic warfare, the source noted, meaning that even in gray-zone operations the aircraft could be disrupted by PLA electronic warfare aircraft operating regularly around the Taiwan Strait. With only four MQ-9Bs in total, Taiwan could lose its entire fleet within a day or two of the outbreak of hostilities. At that price and with those limitations, the source said, further procurement would be strongly opposed within the military, and would contradict Taiwan's stated emphasis on asymmetric warfare.

Since the aircraft and support equipment have already been purchased, a second military source said, Taiwan should use them—but should not compound the problem by treating them as a model for future spending. The U.S. military itself is moving toward lower-cost, more survivable, and expendable drone platforms to replace the MQ-9. Taiwan, operating under tighter budget constraints, should do the same. The source pointed to the Teng Yun II (騰雲二型), a medium-to-large unmanned aircraft developed by Taiwan's Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, as a suitable complement. Its reconnaissance, surveillance, target-designation, and endurance capabilities are adequate, and crucially, it meets the core asymmetric criteria: low unit cost, producible in quantity, and expendable. Pairing a small number of MQ-9Bs with a larger fleet of Teng Yun IIs, the source said, "is actually a very suitable choice."

The war also reinforced, for many inside Taiwan's military, a conclusion that has been building since Ukraine: main battle tanks are losing their battlefield utility. That assessment has direct implications for the M1A2T Abrams tanks now entering service with Taiwan's army. U.S. ground forces did not deploy M1A2s in Iran, but Israel deployed Merkava main battle tanks—widely considered comparable in capability and designed with particular attention to crew survivability and urban warfare—against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Even equipped with the Trophy active protection system, explicitly designed to defeat suicide drones and anti-tank munitions, the Merkava sustained losses of dozens of vehicles in less than two weeks under sustained FPV drone and anti-tank missile attack.

The pattern from Ukraine to Lebanon, sources say, is consistent: neither the M1A2 Abrams nor the Merkava, with or without active protection systems, can withstand sustained suicide drone attack. Taiwan's version of the M1A2—the M1A2T—was sold in a configuration that omits active protection systems entirely. Taiwan purchased 108 M1A2Ts at an average unit cost of approximately $15 million. In a future Taiwan Strait scenario in which drones will dominate the battlespace, a military source said, the M1A2T would struggle not only to contribute to counter-landing operations but simply to survive.

The source said the combat results from the latest conflict should be enough to end any discussion of procuring additional M1A2Ts. A drone costing a few tens of thousands of dollars can destroy a tank worth more than NT$400 million—a cost exchange ratio that makes continued investment in high-end armor difficult to justify. Budget freed by not buying more M1A2Ts should be redirected to asymmetric capabilities. For the armor force Taiwan already has, the source suggested, upgrading existing M60A3 tanks and procuring more domestically produced wheeled armored vehicles—which offer superior mobility—would produce comparable operational effect at far lower cost.

A final lesson Taiwan's military has drawn from the conflict concerns fixed, high-value infrastructure. A U.S. AN/FPS-132 Pave Paws long-range early-warning radar at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, valued at approximately $1.1 billion, was destroyed by Iranian drones shortly after fighting began. THAAD batteries in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar also sustained varying degrees of damage to their AN/TPY-2 radars, which are difficult to relocate quickly. Sources say the same fate almost certainly awaits the AN/FPS-115 Pave Paws radar installed on Leshan Mountain in Hsinchu—a strategic-grade early-warning system capable of detecting incoming ballistic and cruise missiles, and, for that reason, a primary target for PLA strikes in the opening phase of any attack on Taiwan.

A military intelligence source said the Leshan radar is highly capable and has long detection range, but its fixed position and large physical footprint mean it is effectively a one-time asset: once hostilities begin, it buys Taiwan's integrated air-defense system seven to ten additional minutes to prepare for engagement and allows combat aircraft to scramble for force preservation—and then it is likely to be destroyed. After fixed radars are taken out, the source said, the burden of air-defense surveillance would shift to mobile AN/TPS-77 long-range radars distributed across the island, along with naval vessel radars and airborne early warning aircraft operating together.

Given that the Leshan radar's wartime utility is effectively limited to a single use, the source argued, there is no justification for a costly full-system upgrade. Bringing the hardware up to the AN/FPS-132 standard is estimated to cost well in excess of $1 billion. The right approach, the source said, is targeted and modest: replace necessary components, make limited hardware and software improvements sufficient to keep the system functional, and resist pressure to invest heavily in a complete overhaul. The hundreds of billions of New Taiwan dollars saved could instead fund a larger force of concealable, mobile advanced radars and networked data-fusion systems—assets that would sustain Taiwan's air-defense network under sustained attack and prevent it from collapsing after the first strikes land.

Original Article in Chinese

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