Taiwan’s New F-16s: Why They Still Matter

The arrival of the first pair of the 66 F-16C/D Block 70 aircraft on order to the Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) has been a long time coming – and not just because of production delays. First sought as 66 F-16C/Ds under U.S. President George W. Bush, the request was blocked by his administration and remained unapproved under President Barack Obama, before the sale was signed off in 2019 during the first term of President Donald Trump. Yet their arrival comes after years of debate over whether Taiwan’s vulnerable air bases could sustain fighter operations in wartime, raising questions over what role the aircraft can realistically play.

Taiwan’s F-16 story begins in the 1970s. During that decade, it was quickly becoming clear that the island’s fleet of F-100 and F-104 combat aircraft was heading toward obsolescence. While agreement had been reached between Washington and Taipei for the co-production of the upgraded F-5E/F for the ROCAF, many U.S. officials themselves regarded additional F-5Es as inadequate as a long-term solution. Complicating any follow-on agreements, however, was the steady reconciliation between the U.S. and mainland China. 

In 1978, Taipei’s request for F-16s was dismissed out of hand, leaving the F-4 and additional F-5E/Fs as the main options. A decision that year settled on the latter. High-performance fighters again topped Taiwan’s arms requests the following year, but Washington maintained its refusal to supply the F-4, F-16, or F-18.

In December 1978, Washington announced that diplomatic recognition would shift to Beijing on January 1, 1979, and formally gave the one-year notice required to terminate the U.S.-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty, which became defunct on January 1, 1980. This appeared to close the door on a major new fighter sale, despite the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act specifying that it was U.S. policy “to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character,” although what sales that required would be determined by the President and Congress. 

Washington repeatedly calibrated Taiwan’s fighter access to its assessment of China’s capabilities and to the wider U.S.-China relationship. Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election campaign featured positive rhetoric toward Taiwan. However, after considering Taiwan’s requests for the F-5G (which would become the F-20) and the F-16/79 (a deliberately lower-performance export version of the F-16), the decision was once again made to reject the request and focus on the F-5E/F, as well as giving authorization for the transfer of used F-104 fighters from West Germany. Washington judged the F-5E/F qualitatively adequate against China’s then-current fighters.

Reagan institutionalized the arms sales problem in 1982, when the Third Communiqué between Washington and Beijing featured a pledge that arms sales to Taiwan would not exceed recent levels, with Washington stating that it intended to gradually reduce them over time, conditional on Beijing’s continued peaceful approach to the Taiwan issue. At the same time, the Six Assurances issued to Taipei sought to confirm that the U.S. had not agreed to set a date for ending arms sales, but the communiqué nonetheless remained part of the U.S.-China policy framework. At this point, Taiwan began the journey down alternative aircraft procurement paths, including what eventually became the F-CK-1 Indigenous Defense Fighter, produced with extensive assistance from U.S. industry.

However, the end of the Cold War once again changed the dynamic, and in September 1992, during his re-election campaign,  George W. Bush signed off on the purchase by Taiwan of 150 F-16A/B aircraft. The decision was in part justified by China’s purchase of Russian Su-27 aircraft. Domestic politics also favored the decision: General Dynamics built the F-16 in Fort Worth, and Bush announced the sale there during an election campaign in which Texas aerospace employment was politically salient.

Washington continued to approve substantial arms sales to Taiwan over the following decades. From 2006, however, Taipei’s campaign for 66 new F-16C/Ds repeatedly foundered amid changing U.S. concerns that included Taiwan’s own defense budgeting, cross-Strait stability and the broader U.S.-China relationship. The Obama administration instead approved a major upgrade of 145 of the ROCAF’s existing F-16A/Bs. Taiwan also continued to explore a more radical solution to its future fighter requirement: in March 2018, Defense Minister Yen Teh-fa said that future aircraft should ideally possess short-takeoff-and-landing capabilities, identifying the F-35B as one possible candidate. However, attention was increasingly shifting back toward new (and more obtainable) F-16s, and the Trump administration approved the sale of the aircraft the following year.

The backdrop to this was an increasing appreciation that the ROC would not be able to match the PRC on a system-for-system basis. This included combat aircraft, which were also thought particularly vulnerable as their reliance on large, fixed bases left them exposed to being destroyed or trapped on the ground – a concern that likely contributed to Taiwan’s interest in the less runway-dependent F-35B. While Taiwan possesses an extensive network of hardened and underground aircraft shelters, and has practiced operations from roadways, the volume of precision fire the PLA could be expected to deliver would mean the ROCAF would struggle to sustain operations. 

Reflecting this, Taiwan’s wider defense strategy and procurement priorities have also evolved. The “Hard ROC” concept of the late 2000s emphasized hardening, survivability and denying China a quick victory, even as Taipei continued to seek major conventional systems such as new F-16s. Admiral Lee Hsi-ming’s Overall Defense Concept, launched in 2017, pushed related ideas substantially further by placing much greater emphasis on force preservation and asymmetry. Elements of both – particularly force preservation, resilience and asymmetric capability – are now visible in contemporary strategy. The procurement patterns of the 2020s have also reflected the asymmetry requirement, with truck-based anti-ship missiles, HIMARS rocket launchers, anti-tank missiles and mobile surface-to-air missiles receiving major funding. 

During Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv’s air force confounded expectations by not only surviving but continuing to operate through the dispersal of its assets away from major bases and wider efforts at concealment. However, while we cannot be sure of the maturity or effectiveness of China’s precision strike kill web in advance of a conflict, evidence indicates both a much larger precision-missile arsenal with a more persistent surveillance network than that available to Moscow in 2022. Taiwan’s limited size and proximity to the mainland leave restricted scope for defensive countermeasures. The 2026 conflict with Iran has provided another warning of the challenge the island faces, with repeated missile and drone attacks by Tehran demonstrating the vulnerability of bases sited in close proximity to an opponent with a precision strike capability. 

So, the question becomes: if Taiwan already has modernized F-16s, and a substantial body of defense analysis argues that conventional fighters would play only a limited role during the opening phase of an all-out war, why buy new aircraft at all? 

The biggest difference is also the simplest: the new aircraft will supplement an existing fleet that has seen decades of use. While possessing the same radar as the older upgraded aircraft, the F-16 Block 70 does have some real advantages over the upgraded fleet. More powerful engines and a greater range and endurance, thanks to conformal fuel tanks mounted on the fuselage (the ROCAF possesses no aerial-refueling tankers), make them more capable in the interception, patrol, reconnaissance (particularly when fitted with the new MS-110 multispectral pod), and strike roles. The aircraft should also be more survivable once airborne than their predecessors, as they are intended to be fitted with the AN/ALQ-254 Viper Shield enhanced electronic warfare suite – although reports indicate this capability has not yet been installed due to production delays. A structural service life of 12,000 hours is around 50 percent greater than that of previous-production F-16s. 

How these aircraft can be utilized depends on the scenario. In the gray zone, fighters give Taipei a flexible means of visually identifying, shadowing, and escorting PLA aircraft, allowing it to demonstrate control and resolve without immediately escalating toward the use of surface-to-air weapons. The new Block 70s are also relevant because of the high tempo of Chinese military flights around Taiwan: Taipei believes Beijing is attempting to deplete the readiness of its air force with interception demands. New airframes help meet the operational tempo. 

They could also be valuable during a limited blockade, quarantine or coercive operation. By patrolling threatened air corridors, escorting aircraft, investigating contacts and contesting Chinese attempts to establish de facto control of the airspace around the island, the F-16s could give Taipei options for resisting coercion short of opening a broader air campaign. 

In the event of an all-out war, the ROCAF would serve as a complicating factor. Suppression of an opponent’s air operations is resource intensive: any surviving Taiwanese fighter force would require the PLA to continue allocating ISR, strike aircraft, missiles, and combat air patrols to finding, suppressing, and defending against it. Large-scale amphibious and airborne operations are particularly vulnerable to disruption and normally require the attacker to establish at least local and temporary control of the air and sea. Even a small surviving ROCAF fighter force would therefore be a threat the PLA could not safely ignore.

The new F-16s do not solve Taiwan’s wartime airpower problem, nor do they negate the need to invest in mobile and survivable asymmetric systems. Instead, they preserve Taiwanese airpower as a usable instrument across the spectrum from peacetime coercion to full-scale conflict. The strategic situation may have changed in the two decades since this purchase was first proposed, but they remain valuable assets.