Members of Taiwan’s 564th Armored Brigade hold their flag after demonstrating their ability to repel an airborne attack near Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Jan. 11, 2023. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)
About 500 U.S. defense trainers are operating on Taiwan, more than 10 times the number previously disclosed, according to recent congressional testimony by a retired U.S. Navy admiral.
Mark Montgomery, speaking May 15 before the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist party, said the U.S. should double that number to help Taiwan build “a true counter-intervention force.”
“We absolutely have to grow the joint training team in Taiwan,” he told the lawmakers, according to a transcript of his remarks posted on the committee’s website.
Montgomery did not specify whether the personnel are active-duty troops, reservists or civilian contractors.
“It needs to be a thousand,” he said. “If we are going to give them billions of dollars in assistance, sell them tens of billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. gear, it makes sense that we would be over there training and working.”
The U.S. has long provided Taiwan with weapons and military training aimed at deterring Chinese aggression. Beijing views the self-governing island as a breakaway province and has not ruled out the use of force to bring it under control.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has repeatedly stated that reunification with Taiwan is inevitable, and Chinese forces have stepped up military pressure with air and naval exercises around the island in recent years.
While the U.S. does not formally recognize Taiwan diplomatically — a result of its 1979 recognition of China — it maintains unofficial relations under the Taiwan Relations Act, which mandates the provision of arms “of a defensive nature” to Taiwan and a U.S. commitment to resist coercion against the island.
The presence of U.S. military personnel on Taiwan was first confirmed by then-President Tsai Ing-wen in an October 2021 interview with CNN. At the time, she described it as a “small number.” A Congressional Research Service report in May 2024 listed only 41 U.S. military personnel in Taiwan as of December 2023.
Local media reported a significant milestone in bilateral defense cooperation on May 12, when Taiwanese troops fired U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, for the first time during a coastal drill at Jiupeng Base in southern Taiwan.
The 58th Artillery Command launched 33 rockets from 11 launchers into the Pacific Ocean, Taiwan’s state-run Central News Agency reported. Technicians from Lockheed Martin, the system’s U.S. manufacturer, attended the test, said Col. Ho Chih-chung, the unit’s deputy commander.
The scale of the U.S. training mission comes as a surprise, said Ming-Shih Shen, a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei.
The number isn’t fixed, he said in an email Tuesday. “Different people are sent to different projects, such as the Marine Corps, reserves or missile forces,” he wrote.
Shen said U.S. personnel are typically housed by the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy, rather than being hosted by the Taiwanese military.
“We don’t have a comment on specific military operations, engagements, or training,” Andrew Dilbert, a spokesman for the institute, told Stars and Stripes by email Tuesday.
“The United States will continue to support Taiwan in the face of China’s military, economic, informational, and diplomatic pressure campaign,” he said.
Consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. will continue to help Taiwan maintain a sufficient self-defense capability, commensurate with the threat it faces, he said.
“In the future, the number of personnel may be increased due to changes in the situation, or because of increased demand for combat training, or because of the need for US assistance in purchasing new US weapons systems,” Shen wrote. “Some of these personnel may be active duty or reserve personnel.”
