Taiwan’s military and reserve force

Taiwan’s got a military model that’s very similar to Israel’s and that’s an issue that comes up very often when the Taiwanese learn that I’m Israeli and try to compare Israel and Taiwan. Both countries are of the same size, more or less the same economic strength, and are faced by generally similar threats from surrounding powers. Not many of the Taiwanese students I know have actually done military service, and those who have were not in combat positions, and so I lack general basic information about how the Taiwanese army compares to what I know about the Israeli army. When discussing this issue we do simple comparisons : Israeli boys serve 3 years, Israeli girls 2 years, most combat personnel are part of the reserve forces with one month of training or actual service every year, and every once in a while there’s a situation that calls for more than that. With the little I got about Taiwan I was made to understand that girls are exempt from service, boys do around a year, and none of those I know have to do anything beyond that.

Wikipedia has some interesting background data to get me started. Globalsecurity.org has more in-depth information.

While e-mailing with a former Israeli colleague – Niv David – he told me that his MA thesis from a few years back included a comparison and survey of the US, German and Taiwanese army models. He has kindly sent me his very thorough paper to help gain a better insight into Taiwan’s military power and their reserve forces.

His Hebrew paper, summarized to only include Taiwan’s military analysis is available for download with his permission. There aren’t many good Hebrew sources on the topic, so if you’re interested in Taiwan it’s well-worth your time.

 I’ll just quickly translate the final table summarizing the data on Taiwan :

• Regular military force: 370,000
  • Army : 240,000
  • Navy : 62,000 + 20,000 coast guard
  • Marines : 30,000
  • Air force : 68,000
  • % of women : 4% of the officers, 3.1% of the rest.
• Reserve force : 1,657,000
  • % out of all military force : 82%.
  • Army : 1,500,000
  • Navy : 32,000
  • Marines : 35,000
  • Airforce : 90,000
  • % of women : no accurate data, very low to none.
• Reserve force structure:
  • Sources : Graduates of regular military army.
  • Deployment : regional, based on regular residence.
  • Mission : defending the homeland in case of invasion.
  • Experience : has never been tested or operationalized, even during 1996.

Interesting, thanks Niv.