Taiwan disciplines 7 army officers over unreported NT$4.8bn rise in M1A2T tank costs

Taiwan's defence ministry has disciplined seven army officers, among them a former army chief of staff, after an internal investigation found the Army Command quietly agreed a revised M1A2T Abrams tank deal with the United States without first securing the legislature's consent, the Liberty Times reported on Wednesday.

According to the ministry's latest account of the probe, the Army Command changed and signed a new letter of offer and acceptance with the US side on its own, a step the ministry now describes as a major administrative flaw. The seven officers were the core managers responsible for programme management, financial planning and liaison with the US on the foreign military sale, and each received either a formal demerit or a reprimand.

The most senior name on the list is Lieutenant General Chang Yuan-hsun, who was army chief of staff when the deal was revised. Chang previously commanded the army's Tenth Army Corps and served as the ministry's inspector general. He reached mandatory retirement age and left the service in July 2025, and in September that year was placed by the Veterans Affairs Council as chairman of the Hsin Hsin bus company, so the penalty is recorded against an officer who is no longer in uniform.

How the bill grew by NT$4.8bn

The case surfaced in May, when opposition legislator Ma Wen-chun told the legislature's foreign affairs and national defence committee that the army's new tank programme, originally approved at about NT$40.5bn, had grown to about NT$45.3bn without lawmakers being told. Defence Minister Wellington Koo said then that the army had not added the extra cost to its budget request as the offer letter required, and that officials had already been punished.

A ministry official, Huang Wen-chi, told the committee that when the army signed the third version of the offer letter it folded in six M1070 heavy equipment transporter tractors and some M88A2 armoured recovery vehicles that had earlier been deferred. He said the army should have made a special report to the legislature before signing but did not, and that the ministry discovered the lapse the previous year, disciplined officials from the chief of staff down and asked the Executive Yuan for supplementary funds. Army chief of staff Chen Chien-yi said the Cabinet approved the extra NT$4.8bn in August 2025.

The ministry also cited follow-on add-on costs and exchange-rate swings as drivers of the gap. Lawmakers from both main parties criticised the handling, and the committee agreed to freeze NT$2bn of the roughly NT$8.7bn earmarked for the tanks in the 2026 budget until the ministry delivered a written report and improvement plan that lawmakers accept.

Tanks already in service

The dispute has not slowed the fielding of the tanks. All 108 M1A2Ts bought from the US have been delivered, and three units under the Sixth Army Corps, which defends northern Taiwan, have completed conversion training: the first and third combined arms battalions of the 584th Armored Brigade and the tank company of the third combined arms battalion of the 269th Mechanized Infantry Brigade.

Those units have been placed in the military's defence order of battle, deployed to Taoyuan airport during this year's Han Kuang exercise and completed live firing on the move at the Kengzikou range. The 269th Brigade's tanks are now taking part in the 10-day Lu Sheng 2 force-on-force exercise alongside drones, while the newest unit, the 584th Brigade's second combined arms battalion, fired its tank guns at stationary and moving targets at Kengzikou on Tuesday.

For Taiwan's arms programme, the case is a reminder that changes to a US offer letter now carry a political cost at home as well as a financial one. With the legislature holding back part of this year's tank money, the ministry's written report on the M1A2T overrun is the next test of whether lawmakers are satisfied that the army has fixed how it reports changes to foreign military sales.