Cabinet weighing options to fund weapons excluded from budget bill

Taipei, May 14 (CNA) Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said Thursday that the Cabinet is considering ways to fund key weapons programs excluded from a supplementary budget bill passed by the Legislature last week.

Those options include proposing another supplementary budget or increasing the Ministry of National Defense's (MND) annual budget, Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) quoted Cho as saying at a weekly Cabinet news conference.

The Legislature last week passed an opposition-backed supplementary budget bill to fund U.S. weapons systems, including HIMARS rocket systems, M109A7 self-propelled howitzers, TOW 2B missiles, Altius-700M and 600 drones, and Javelin anti-armor missiles.

However, the bill excluded funding for domestic contract production programs and foreign direct commercial sales.

• Taiwan passes U.S. arms bill with spending ceiling of US$24.8 billion

At the same news conference, Huang Wen-chi (黃文啟), head of the MND's Department of Strategic Planning, said the Legislature's decision to cut funding for man-portable counter-drone systems would significantly weaken Taiwan's ability to respond to small drone swarms.

Such swarms are an expected threat in modern warfare, Huang said, citing their use in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Huang also said the exclusion of funding for domestically produced littoral warfare attack drones and small kamikaze unmanned surface vessels had hurt Taiwan's defense industry, as reflected in the weak performance of local defense stocks in recent days.

He added that the domestically developed Strong Bow anti-ballistic missile, which has a higher interception altitude than PAC-3 MSE missiles, could improve Taiwan's ability to intercept incoming missiles.

Excluding funding for the system has therefore weakened Taiwan's air defense, Huang said.

According to the Cabinet spokesperson, Cho also urged lawmakers to quickly approve funding for HIMARS systems that the United States has approved for sale to Taiwan, as required under the supplementary budget bill signed into law by President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) on Monday.

Under the legislation, both approved and future arms sales must still receive legislative approval before funding can be disbursed.

Taiwan must make its first HIMARS payment by the end of May, after the U.S. agreed to extend the original March 30 deadline amid a legislative deadlock over the Cabinet's supplementary budget proposal.

MND official Chen Wen-hsing (陳文星) said the ministry is prepared to use its first reserve fund or request access to the Cabinet's second reserve fund as a backup if the Legislature does not approve the disbursement.