Murphy's Law: Chinese Fighter Pilots Over Arizona

Archives

February 12, 2016: Taiwan recently admitted that it had an F-16 training squadron in the United States. This is normally kept quiet by Taiwan and the United States as part of an unofficial American agreement to not sell Taiwan new jet fighters in return for China not trying to take Taiwan by force. The recent revelation was caused by a training accident that left a Taiwanese F-16 dead and there was no way to hide that.

The Taiwanese F-16 squadron has been in Arizona since 1997 and that was known to the Chinese. This training arrangement came a few years after Taiwan bought 150 F-16s and the uproar from the Chinese led to an “arrangement.” The way this arrangement works, if no one publicizes the presence of Taiwanese F-16s in Arizona China pretends that there is nothing to complain about. China has also not made a big deal out of American firms helping Taiwan upgrade its F-16s. Apparently China will also not complain if the United States sells Taiwan several dozen U.S. Marine Corps AV-8 Harrier vertical takeoff ground support aircraft. These AV-8s will be refurbished before Taiwan gets them. China will probably complain about the AV-8, eventually if only because they would probably be used to attack any Chinese amphibious force trying to land in Taiwan. Meanwhile China does have over 1,200 short range ballistic missiles (with non-nuclear warheads) aimed at Taiwan.

 

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contribute. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   contribute   Close