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Rogers: The topics they care about are exactly what the US authorities have to consider. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

To put it a little superficially, the Sayben under the leadership of Kojiro Ikawa will be of great help to Taiwan's security situation, because after all, the build-up of the military strength of the Sayben will inevitably disperse the mainland's military strength and greatly reduce the pressure on Taiwan. If you look a little deeper, you'll see that this is not the case at all.

In the face of the military threat, the mainland will inevitably strengthen its military strength.

Although the mainland will focus on the strategic direction, the main force in dealing with the current threat and resolving the cross-strait issue is the air force and navy. In the face of the mainland's increased naval and air military strength, Taiwan cannot pin all its hopes on the outside world and must step up its armament buildup.

Herein lies the problem.

With Taiwan's strength, it simply does not have the ability to develop the military-industrial system, and almost all the main battle equipment needs to be imported from other countries.

Constrained by its special political status, Taiwan's channels for importing weapons and equipment are very narrow.

As a result, Taiwan often spends more money and can only buy defective products. For example, 20 years ago, the F-16A/B fighter jets purchased by Taiwan from the United States were second-hand goods that were not sent to Pakistan, and the price was several percent higher than that of the more advanced F-16C/D. Another example is the "Lafitte" class frigates purchased from France during the same period, which are not only expensive, but also only hulls, and all shipboard weapons and electronic equipment have to be installed separately.

In an arms race with the mainland, Taiwan has no chance of winning.

During the negotiations on the purchase of F-35A fighters, the US authorities assessed the military strength of the two sides of the strait in the next 10 years, holding that Taiwan needs to purchase at least 150 planes to replace the F-5E/F and "Ching-kuo" fighters in the fleet in order to maintain the strategic balance between the two sides of the strait.

According to this calculation, Taiwan needs to invest at least $130 billion.

For Taiwan, this is almost impossible. Besides, in addition to buying fighter jets, Taiwan also has to buy warships and other main battle equipment. If all the money for arms purchases is spent on fighter planes and it is impossible to reequip other troops, Taiwan's security situation will not be optimistic.

This is still the estimation before the deviance.

According to the latest strategic assessment, if the mainland's J-20 is finalized and mass-produced within five years, and after obtaining a more excellent engine, the aerodynamic shape is modified to bring the combat effectiveness to a level comparable to that of the F-22A, and then the Su-27SK fleet is replaced according to the standard of dealing with the military threat of the mainland, then no matter how much F-35A Taiwan procures, it will not be able to maintain the strategic balance between the two sides of the strait.

The most effective solution is to purchase the F-22 and F-35 to form a high-low match.

According to the assessment made by the US authorities, Taiwan needs to purchase 60 F-22s and 120 F-35A in order to maintain a strategic balance.

Such a flower would cost at least $180 billion.

It can be seen from this that the build-up of armaments has not only not improved Taiwan's security situation, but has caused Taiwan to suffer greatly.

The problem is, not to mention the F-22, Taiwan can't even afford enough F-35A.

As far as the United States is concerned, Taiwan is a strategic frontier that absolutely cannot be "lost," and it is all the more necessary to keep Taiwan after it has drifted away.

Long before Liu Wei found Li Xuechang, the attitude of the US authorities was somewhat relaxed.

After receiving the strategic analysis and assessment report, Norris instructed the Pentagon to reconsider the arms sales to Taiwan, and clearly mentioned that Loma should be asked to offer a more acceptable price.

In the absence of the temporary sale of the F-22A to Taiwan, and the fact that Taiwan does not have the ability to introduce such fighters, the only way is to facilitate the sale of the F-35A as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, the development cost of the F-35 series fighter is too high, and it is difficult to reduce the price.

What's worse is that in recent years, factors such as the sharp depreciation of the dollar and high global inflation have led to a significant increase in the actual purchase price of the F-35A. For example, in 2006, Loma estimated the unit price at $75 million, which rose to $110 million two years later, and now stands at $160 million, which is not much cheaper than the F-22A. If the F-35A is delivered to Taiwan in five years, the unit price will definitely exceed $200 million. Counting the evenly shared development costs, the unit price will not be much less than $300 million.

At this price, not to mention Taiwan, even the United States is a bit unbearable.

After Gates stepped down, the new secretary of defense re-examined the procurement and equipment plan for the F-35 series of fighters.

The Marine Corps bore the brunt of the attack, if it weren't for the fact that Ben had already invested in the development of the F-35B, and promised to buy production licenses and hundreds of aircraft, and Italy and Britain still did not give up, otherwise the project would definitely be discontinued, and the final equipment plan to be retained was less than 200 aircraft.

Correspondingly, the size of the armament of the naval F-35C has been increased, part of which is used to supplement the reduced F-35B and ensure the size of the Marine Corps aviation. The Air Force's F-35A was cut by a third, leaving less than one thousand sixteen hundred, which will eventually replace the F-16 family of fighters on a one-to-two basis.

The reduction in the number of purchases by the United States will inevitably lead to a significant increase in the unit price and shared expenses of the F-35 series of fighters.

There is no doubt that Taiwan cannot afford the F-35A, at least it is impossible to replace the aging fighter that is about to be decommissioned with the F-35A.

As a result, negotiations have come to a near standstill.

With the intervention of the Pentagon, the Loma company lowered the unit price of the F-35A to $170 million, but proposed to let Taiwan share the development costs, and use this year's prices as the benchmark to multiply the inflation coefficient when the official procurement is made.

Based on this calculation, 150 F-35A will also cost about 111 billion dollars.

The total price that the Taiwan authorities can accept is only $80 billion at most, and one-third of it has to be bartered. Although during the negotiations, the Taiwan authorities no longer insisted on barter, but proposed trade compensation, that is, the United States had to purchase goods equivalent to $30 billion from Taiwan.

The gap is so great that both sides feel that it is unprofitable.

If Ben hadn't jumped out to make trouble, it was very likely that the matter would drag on until one side made concessions, and it certainly wasn't the United States.

According to past practice, it is very likely that the Taiwan authorities will reduce the scale of their purchases while keeping prices unchanged, such as purchasing only 120 or even 100 F-35As, while the US political axe will provide Taiwan with tens of billions of dollars in product orders in the form of trade compensation.

It's a pity that when this is so noisy, the Western Pacific will be lively all of a sudden.

Although Continental has not reacted for the time being, there is enough information to prove that Continental has accelerated the pace of finalization and mass production of the J-20, and after obtaining the new engine, Continental's engineers have made significant improvements to the overall design of the J-20, and the surname can not be much worse than that of the F-22A.

The sale of the F-35A to Taiwan has become a top priority.

In this matter, the pressure on the US political axe is also very great.

You must know that the United States is not a country dominated by political axes, and the real masters are enterprises. Although the US political axe attaches great importance to arms sales to Taiwan and has even proposed to give priority to providing Taiwan with F-35A, it is impossible for Loma to do business at a loss wherever the cost of developing and producing fighter jets is.

During the negotiations, the representative of the US political axe also proposed that Taiwan could contribute to the improvement of the F-35A.

This proposal is of great interest to the Taiwan authorities, because the main improvement is to improve the air combat capability of the F-35A to meet the needs of many countries that cannot afford F-22A fighters. By participating in the improvement work, Taiwan will be able to reap the rewards of future sales of F-35A fighter jets.

It's a pity that Loma didn't even arrange the mass production of the F-35A, and it was impossible to talk about improvement.

Just when the two sides were about to run out of talks, the Taiwan negotiating delegation suddenly made a major concession and basically accepted the price proposed by Loma, with only a few additional demands.

This requirement happens to be related to Liu Wei.

According to the plan put forward by Taiwan, the Taiwan administration will pay $90 billion for 150 F-35As, and the other $20 billion will be paid by Taiwanese enterprises in the United States through commercial channels.

Taiwan's reason for making this request is simple: it is impossible for the parliament to pass a proposal for arms purchases of up to $111 billion.

As a result, the rest of the payment can only be made through unofficial channels.

This proposal is reasonable, and if the arms purchase proposal is rejected by the Taiwan Parliament, no matter how well the talks are made now, it will be a bamboo basket. Just paying through commercial channels, there are legal obstacles on the US side. For the same reason, it is impossible for the US Congress to approve such an arms purchase contract that is suspected of being privately traded.

The question is, is there any other option?

If not, the only way to do it is to make a fuss about the trading method.

The US federal political axe will definitely come forward in this matter, but it must not be involved, otherwise it will definitely be a big political scandal if it comes out in the future.

The method proposed by the US side is to first sign a procurement contract worth $90 billion, and then the Taiwan authorities will sign a supplementary contract with the Loma Company, which mainly involves post-maintenance, personnel training, spare parts procurement, and supporting equipment, so as to bypass Congress.

The only problem with this is that Loma needs to take more business risks.

To that end, Loma raised the asking price for the supplementary contract from $20 billion to $30 billion and asked the federal government to guarantee the F-35A for the Air Force's purchase. That is, if Loma loses money on this deal, the US authorities will have to spend more money on the F-35A.

This price is not too high, and the US federal political axe is willing to come forward to vouch for it.

The problem is that before that, the federal government must clarify one thing, that is, the size of Taiwan's enterprises in the United States, that is, whether they have the ability to pay for arms purchases on behalf of the Taiwan authorities.

The investigation will definitely take time.

After the main issues are settled, the secondary issues need to be negotiated one by one, especially the supporting maintenance facilities and the supporting equipment on the fighter jets.

When Liu Wei returned to Las Vegas, he received a message from Zhang Jinnan.

Significant progress has been made in the talks, and the Taiwan authorities will certainly not be able to come up with $30 billion, so the National Defense and Security Bureau will have to fulfill its promises.

Fortunately, Zhang Jinnan did not urge Liu Wei to give money.

It will be a few months before the negotiations reach a conclusion, and the signing of a formal contract will be a year or two later, and as for the payment of additional payments, it will have to wait until the F-35A is delivered to the Taiwanese military.

(To be continued)