What happened
On 17–18 December 2025 the US administration notified Congress of more than $11bn in new Foreign Military Sales cases for Taiwan — reported at $11.1bn and the largest single package by value in the history of the relationship, exceeding the previous $8.4bn high. Reported contents include HIMARS launchers and munitions, sixty M109A7 Paladin howitzers, Javelin anti-armour missiles and ALTIUS loitering munitions. The notification raised the total value of notified-but-undelivered cases — the backlog — to roughly $32bn, of which around 46 per cent was by then asymmetric systems, against 22 per cent in late 2023.
A congressional notification is the first rung of a long ladder, not a delivery, and this module's standing discipline separates notification from contract, from backlog, from delivery, from fielding. What the notification does establish is that the pipeline did not stop: any account of 2026 that describes US transfers only as slowing omits the largest package ever notified, entered five months earlier. It also shifted the composition of what is owed toward the asymmetric systems Taiwan's own defence debate is about, which is a more informative fact than the headline value.
Confidence: High
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