Taiwan’s $19bn backlog existed before Ukraine. Factories still had to build it.
A January 2023 War on the Rocks analysis put Taiwan’s backlog at nearly $19 billion and argued that factories, supply chains and the US arms-sales process mattered more than diversion to Ukraine. It also warned that future competition for scarce production would become harder to avoid.
Taiwan’s arms backlog had a number attached to it. The number did not explain itself.
In a January 2023 analysis, Jennifer Kavanagh and Jordan Cohen described Taiwan as carrying a weapons backlog of nearly $19 billion. The figure had been cited by Senator Josh Hawley in an argument that US military aid to Ukraine was compromising the more important task of arming Taiwan. A November 2022 Wall Street Journal account and a Heritage Foundation analysis had made a similar connection, pointing to weapons and munitions going to Ukraine.
The War on the Rocks authors disputed that explanation. They argued that the story was misleading because Taiwan and Ukraine had not generally been waiting for exactly the same systems through exactly the same purchasing channel. They put more weight on limitations in the US defence industrial base and on inefficiencies between an arms sale and delivery.
That distinction changes the shape of the problem. Taiwan’s main purchases had historically moved through Foreign Military Sales, a government-to-government process involving requirements, agency review, contracting and production. Much of Ukraine’s support, by contrast, had come from US stocks and other security-assistance routes rather than from the same conventional sales pipeline. The analysis said Foreign Military Sales made up less than five per cent of US security aid to Ukraine since 2014.
The claim was not that Ukraine had no effect. The authors acknowledged that the United States would increasingly have to allocate constrained resources across the Russian and Chinese theatres as the war continued and the situation around the Taiwan Strait became more precarious. They also said that new authorities allowing Taiwan to compete for excess defence articles, increased funding and Ukraine’s extensive needs would intensify direct competition over time.
Their argument was about cause and remedy. Slowing support to Ukraine or simply giving Taiwan a higher place in a queue would not repair the existing backlog if the underlying production and sales systems remained slow. The recommended response was investment in the US industrial base, greater production capacity, stronger supply chains and less concentration in the defence sector. They also called for a shorter arms-sales process and changes to export controls that could permit more joint production with Taiwan.
An approved sale is not the same thing as an aircraft, missile or launcher in Taiwanese service. A Foreign Military Sales case can pass political and administrative gates and still wait for a factory, a subcontractor, a technical review or a delivery slot. The analysis treated that sale-to-delivery timeline as a problem in its own right. It did not reduce the backlog to a single refusal by Washington.
AI-generated representative image.