Taiwan wants artillery that can shoot and scoot, but towed guns will carry the load for years

On 11 October 2026 the Liberty Times reported that Taiwan's armed forces intend to make every new howitzer and mortar they buy a vehicle-mounted weapon, on wheels or tracks, so crews can fire and move off before they are found. Political and military sources told the paper the order of purchases and the timetable are still being studied and no budget has been set.

The direction is sound. The harder question is timing. Apart from 60 M109A7 self-propelled howitzers due from 2030, nothing in the plan has money attached, which means the army's towed guns will remain its main tube artillery for most of the rest of the decade.

Why speed now matters more than range

A 2024 military forum essay in Youth Daily News, the defence ministry's newspaper, set out the lesson from Ukraine. Artillery that supports the front line becomes prey for enemy guns, and cheap drones have made target-finding so easy that range alone no longer keeps a battery safe. The essay said most guns destroyed by drones were towed pieces that were slow to leave their positions, while drones rarely managed to chase and kill self-propelled guns on the move.

The same essay cited US Army trials in which the Hawkeye 105mm mobile howitzer, mounted on a Humvee, went from stopping to firing its first round in 1 minute 54 seconds and needed 3 minutes 15 seconds to pack up. The towed M119 took 4 minutes 41 seconds and 8 minutes 37 seconds. Hawkeye also needed a crew of four, against seven for the M119.

Taiwan's own figures point the same way. According to the Liberty Times, the army's 105mm howitzer fires at most four rounds a minute, needs eight soldiers and takes several minutes to come into or out of action, while the 2-CT Hawkeye supplied to Ukraine fires eight rounds a minute and can leave within three minutes of firing. The sources linked the vehicle-mounted plan directly to attack drones and other counter-battery weapons.

What arrives, and when

The one firm piece is the M109A7. The Liberty Times reported in July that Taiwan is buying 60 of the tracked howitzers with special budget funds, with the first due in 2030, and that the United States has committed to 120 in total, with a second batch of 60 to follow. The M109A7 can go from moving to firing in about a minute. The roughly 225 M109A2 and M109A5 guns it will replace have served for more than 28 years.

Everything else, including further mobile howitzers and new 120mm and 81mm mortar carriers, has no published schedule. For mortars, the army must choose between the open-hatch layout of its current CM22A1 and CM23 carriers, which is cheap and mature but leaves crews exposed, and turreted systems such as AMOS or NEMO, which protect the crew and fire faster but cost more to buy, train on and maintain, according to a second Liberty Times report.

Cheaper bridges exist

Not every option is expensive. Finland is buying more than 100 Patria TREMOS kits, with an option for hundreds more and deliveries running to 2028, TechNews reported in September. The kits mount existing 120mm or 81mm mortar barrels on wheeled or light tracked vehicles, can fire within 60 seconds of a fire mission arriving, reach 12 rounds a minute and move off right after the last round. Because they reuse existing ammunition and firing tables, they ease the training and logistics burden of switching.

There is also a case for keeping some towed guns. In August, Mei Fu-hsing, who heads a Taiwan Strait security research centre, argued in United Daily News that hundreds of US M777A2 towed howitzers could be retired as the US Army moves to a wheeled gun, and that Taiwan should be ready to bid for them as excess defence articles. He noted that a towed gun is not put out of action when its truck breaks down, an advantage for a military long short of maintenance capacity.

The gap to watch

Put together, the sources suggest a decade in which Taiwan's best-protected guns arrive slowly while its most exposed ones stay on the front line. Kit-based mortar carriers and quick-firing wheeled systems could narrow that gap sooner than a full new fleet, but only if the plan gets a budget line, a schedule and a decision on the mortar design. Until it does, the shoot-and-scoot army described on 11 October 2026 remains an intention rather than a capability.