USA plans to sale more drones and missilies to Taiwan

The White House is pushing ahead with more trades of modern military equipment to Taiwan as Beijing raises stress on the democratic island it alleges as its own.

Administrators notified Congress on Tuesday that the Trump administration was preparing to sell MQ-9 drones and a coastal protective missile system to Taipei, sources close with the situation reported Reuters. The potential sales follow three other announcements on Monday that brought criticism from China.

One of the eight sources stated that in entirety, the sales were estimated at roughly $5 billion. Quite often figures from the United States’s foreign army deals involve costs for training, spares and fees making the values challenging to pinpoint.

Reuters published in September that as several as seven principal weapons arrangements were making their way through the US export process as the Trump administration inclines up pressure on China in the closing weeks of campaigning for the November 3 presidential.

The pre-notification to Congress for the General Atomics-made MQ-9 drones is the first since President Donald Trump’s administration pushed ahead with its intention to trade drones to more nations by reinterpreting an global arms control arrangement named the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).

A Taiwan government source confirmed that “Taiwan has five defence systems that are going through the method.”

The US Senate Foreign Relations and House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committees have the power to review, and block, weaponry sales under an informal review method before the State Department gives its formal notification to the legislative branch.