The ongoing debate over Taiwan's special defense procurement legislation has sharpened public scrutiny of specific weapons systems. Two acquisitions have drawn particular criticism: the 108 M1A2T main battle tanks, now fully delivered, which retired Army Commander and former Deputy Minister of National Defense General Lee Hsiang-chou (李翔宙) has called "the most absurd arms procurement case in recent decades," and the M109A7 self-propelled howitzers proposed under the new legislation, which have come under question after the U.S. Army announced it would discontinue further purchases of the system. Both critiques carry some merit — but both also rest on reasoning that is more selective than comprehensive.
The Bridge-Weight Problem Is Manageable, Not Disqualifying
General Li's case against the M1A2T rests on several objections: that roughly 40 percent of Taiwan's approximately 29,000 bridges were built before 1980 and cannot bear the tank's 70-metric-ton weight; that the vehicle consumes fuel at a prohibitive rate; and that in a scenario where People's Liberation Army (PLA) ground forces land and fighting moves into urban areas, the M1A2T would never be used at all.
Each of these concerns deserves scrutiny. On bridge weight: the constraint is real but far less decisive than the argument implies. If unit commanders — down to individual tank commanders and drivers — conduct proper peacetime battlefield preparation, mapping out multiple movement routes from garrison to survivability positions and from those positions to tactical deployment locations, the bridge problem becomes a logistics and planning challenge, not a strategic disqualifier.
Crucially, Taiwan's military reduced its original order from 200 to 108 tanks and concentrated the entire fleet in the northern theater, primarily around the Hsinchu Hukou and Linkou plateau areas. These vehicles are already pre-positioned near their principal tactical locations. They are not expected to redeploy southward to reinforce central or southern commands. Within that northern operating area, moreover, a significant number of bridges have been rebuilt or upgraded in recent years — substantially reducing the mobility constraints that General Li describes. The concern about impassable bridges, while legitimate in the abstract, has already been substantially mitigated by deployment decisions and infrastructure improvements.
Where a suitable bridge truly does not exist on a planned route, or where existing bridges have been destroyed, engineering solutions — bridging equipment and combat engineer support — are available responses, provided they are planned for in advance. High fuel consumption, similarly, is manageable when the operational radius is as limited as it is for a northern-theater-only deployment: pre-positioned fuel points near tactical locations are sufficient to address the problem.
How the M1A2T Would Actually Be Used in Taiwan's Defense
The claim that the M1A2T would play no role once PLA forces come ashore and urban fighting begins rests on a misreading of how armor is likely to be employed in Taiwan's defense concept.
A homeland defense battle would not involve massing dozens of tanks for a set-piece armored engagement against landing forces. The more likely employment model is disaggregation: tanks broken into small elements and integrated into combined-arms task forces alongside mechanized infantry, artillery, air defense, unmanned aerial systems, anti-armor units, and combat engineers. In this role, the M1A2T's main gun provides the firepower backbone for engaging PLA armored vehicles, hardened obstacles, and fortified positions. Individual tanks or two-vehicle sections would also support infantry units of garrison brigades from well-prepared, concealed fighting positions.
The most likely battlegrounds for these engagements — the approaches from PLA landing beaches to major urban centers — include areas such as the corridor from Taipei Port toward Bali, bridge and elevated highway approaches from the western coastline toward metropolitan areas, airport perimeters, and satellite towns on the urban periphery. In all of these areas, armor operating in support of prepared infantry positions retains meaningful combat utility. It is not "never used."
Taiwan's military has in recent years required armored units to physically drive their vehicles along planned movement routes to tactical positions during the Han Kuang exercises and monthly combat readiness rotations — replacing a previous practice in which a handful of officers would simply drive a personal vehicle over the same route and call it done. This is precisely the kind of peacetime battlefield preparation that addresses the bridge and terrain concerns General Li raises. The recent publicized patrol by M1A2T tanks along Provincial Highway 1 through Hsin-feng Township and across the Hsinchu Chiu-kang Bridge — rebuilt in October 2009 — is a concrete example of this approach in practice.
The honest bottom line: dismissing the M1A2T solely on the basis of bridge weight limits, broken terrain, fuel consumption, or urban terrain unsuitability is an overreach. Every one of those constraints can be substantially mitigated through disciplined peacetime preparation. None of them is an "unbearable burden."
The genuine concern for Taiwan's armored units is not bridges or terrain. It is the PLA's drones. Once infantry units receive the man-portable air defense systems currently planned for distribution, low-flying PLA aircraft and attack helicopters will be a manageable threat. Unmanned systems, in their scale and variety, will not. Taiwan's military should direct serious analytical effort toward that problem — and should be cautious about letting the label "the strongest ground combat vehicle" substitute for that harder work. At the same time, abandoning armored vehicles altogether because drones threaten them would leave infantry to advance on foot, under fire, against fortified positions and obstacles with nothing but their bodies and personal weapons. That is not a realistic alternative.
M109A7 Would Bring Taiwan's Artillery Into the Modern Era
In April, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told Congress that the Army intends to stop purchasing the M109A7 self-propelled howitzer, citing the lethal threat posed by drones on the modern battlefield and the need for faster-deploying, lighter alternatives. This announcement has prompted domestic critics to question whether Taiwan should proceed with its planned purchase of 60 M109A7 systems. The answer, on balance, is yes — and the reason is the current state of Taiwan's artillery.
Taiwan's active towed artillery and self-propelled gun inventory is not merely aging; it is operating at roughly the tactical standard of the 1980s. The systems lack GPS-based autonomous positioning and orientation. When a battery engages a target, it must rely on survey teams to manually establish the orientation of the position and the target area, then calculate firing data — charge, deflection — for each gun by hand. A registration round is then fired, an observer reports the fall of shot, and only after confirmation do the remaining guns fire. This process is slow, inflexible, and dangerous on a modern battlefield.
It also forces all guns in a battery to occupy the same position simultaneously. Dispersed single-gun engagement — the standard for survivable modern artillery — is not possible with current Taiwanese systems. In a homeland defense scenario characterized by deeply interlocked friendly and enemy positions and a highly fluid front line, a battery compelled to mass in one location is a battery that will be destroyed by counter-battery fire.
Introducing 60 M109A7 systems, together with the International Field Artillery Tactical Data System (IFATDS), would advance Taiwan's artillery capabilities by approximately 45 years in four specific ways:
1. Dramatically reduced time-to-fire. The automated fire control system compresses the cycle from target acquisition through fire mission assignment to first round on target.
2. Network integration. Through the field artillery tactical data link, the M109A7 can operate in coordination with M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), attack helicopters, and other fires assets — improving combined-arms lethality.
3. Dispersed, survivable deployment. The M109A7's modern fire control system supports single-gun engagement and autonomous positioning. Guns can compute firing data on the move, occupy a position, fire, and displace in minimal time — significantly reducing vulnerability to PLA counter-battery systems.
4. Precision capability. Compatible with the M1156 Precision Guidance Kit (PGK) — a GPS-guided fuze fitted to standard 155mm projectiles — the M109A7 gains a meaningful precision-strike capability. Its 30-kilometer range falls short of comparable PLA or Western systems, but it is sufficient for guns positioned at the base of the Central Mountain Range to engage PLA beachhead logistics nodes near the coastline.
The experience of the Russia-Ukraine war does show that tracked self-propelled howitzers like the M109A7 are more vulnerable to drone attack than newer wheeled systems, which can relocate more quickly. That is a genuine limitation. But the realistic alternatives are absent: the U.S. military has no wheeled self-propelled howitzer available for export; procurement from other suppliers within a relevant timeframe is unlikely; and domestic development would take years. In that context, accepting a batch of M109A7 systems now — along with the IFATDS — to shed its anachronistic attachment to 1980s-era artillery tactics and reach at least a threshold of modern battlefield competence, while simultaneously developing drone-protection measures and prioritizing wheeled systems in the next artillery modernization cycle, is the pragmatic course.
*The author is a research fellow at the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies and a research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Technology(CAT) at Tamkang University.
Original Article in Chinese
（Related： Exclusive | Former U.S. Intel Chief: Stalling Taiwan’s Defense Bill Is Inviting Tyranny ｜ Latest ）This article was originally published in le penseur（奔騰思潮） and is republished here with permission.
