New F-16S Buy Taiwan Time And Space Against China's Air Coercion

Lin and others note that China sustained an escalated operational baseline established following Taiwanese President William Lai's May 2024 inauguration; People's Liberation Army (PLA) monthly sorties never fell below 209, averaging 319 monthly incursions through late 2025 - a 129% jump compared to the January 2022 to April 2024 period.

Although they point out that operations dipped 5.4% between May and December 2025 relative to the prior year, annual activity reached unprecedented historical highs.

The ROCAF must intercept incursions to show resolve and prevent China from normalizing operations. However, this response risks falling into a Chinese attrition strategy that burns Taiwanese flight hours, exhausts maintenance crews and pilots, and strains defense budgets.

Over time, this attrition depletes readiness, degrades crisis-response capacity, and heightens the risk of dangerous pilot error or miscalculations that could trigger accidental conflict.

The new airframes provide vital relief from this wear and tear. The F-16V Block 70 has a 12,000-hour structural lifespan - over 50% longer than older models - allowing the ROCAF to shadow intrusions and contest airspace without prematurely exhausting its fleet.

They could also respond visibly to coercive air activities by patrolling air corridors, escorting intruding aircraft and contesting China's attempts to assert control over Taiwan's airspace.

Yet peacetime air policing does not ensure wartime survival against modern threats. According to Royal Air Force Air Vice-Marshal James Beck in an October 2025 Business Insider article, fifth-generation fighters like the F-35 are now the baseline because modern peer adversaries have neutralized the decisive edge once provided by stealth and early sensor fusion.

Beck notes that advances in integrated air defense networks, widespread drone proliferation and AI-enabled sensing have dramatically compressed air dominance into fleeting bursts.

Because the Ukraine conflict shows that failing to contest the skies early leads to costly attritional warfare, Beck emphasizes that fifth-generation capabilities no longer represent a futuristic luxury, but are the minimum entry standard required to counter basic peer-level threats.

While Taiwan has no fifth-generation fighters, China is rapidly building up its fleet, with The War Zone (TWZ) reporting in July 2026 that around 500 J-20 airframes may have been delivered to the PLA as of mid-2026.

According to TWZ, China crossed the 300-airframe mark in 2025 as annual production reached approximately 120 jets. The report adds that China has stealth fighters deployed across 14 frontline air brigades and three test bases, and that it could field 1,000 J-20s across all variants by 2030.

The US is unlikely to supply Taiwan with the fifth-generation F-35, as it may believe the F-16Vs already fulfill Taiwan's defense requirements. A more cynical reason is that China could get its hands on F-35 technology if the jets were supplied to Taiwan and the latter capitulates.

Jimmy Chien mentions in a March 2026 Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) article that Taiwan would shelter its F-16 fighter jets inside mountain bunkers during the opening phases of a conflict to protect them from continuous Chinese missile strikes.

Chien describes Taiwan's F-16s as conventional-asymmetric assets that would not engage initially. Instead, he argues, Taiwan would wait for low-cost, runway-independent unmanned systems and ground-based air defenses to blunt the assault and disrupt adversary air superiority.

Once temporary windows open, Chien notes that Taiwan plans to rapidly repair damaged runways, scramble F-16 sorties from hardened shelters and launch coordinated air-delivered strikes alongside ground fires to saturate Chinese air defenses and relieve frontline units.