TaiwanMonth by month · backlog update
Select a case for its record, milestones and status in every monthly update.
Sold, not yet delivered · as of Sept. 30, 2026
$29.72B
28 open cases notified to Congress since 2017.
Case timeline
Backlog total, as published each month
Each row is one Foreign Military Sales (FMS) case that the U.S. Department of State has notified to Congress, but that Taiwan has not fully received. The bar starts on the notification date and runs to the data date: its length represents the amount of time Taiwan has been waiting.
Each case's bar is color-coded based on the type of capability. Purple bars represent traditional capabilities, teal bars represent asymmetric capabilities, and gold bars represent munitions. Orange sections on the bars mark cases where deliveries have started but the case is not finished. A dashed tail runs to the completion date most recently reported by Taiwan's MND, a contract notice or the press. Diamonds mark a contract award or signed Letter of Offer and Acceptance (LOA). Small ticks mark other milestones, such as the ministry listing a case as delayed, or significant updates to case development. Hovering on a mark allows a preview, while selecting each row shows the full record and sources.
The chart and table for each monthly update are shown at the top, month by month. Use the arrows (or the ← and → keys) to step through the months. Select a wedge to list its cases, and a case for its record and its status in every update. Green rows were added that month and cases that left the backlog are struck through at the bottom.
The second chart shows the backlog's dollar total. Monthly total is the figure published each month, including the Cato Institute's updates from January to December 2024, then TSM's since January 2025. How it piled up stacks today's open cases by the date each was notified, so you can see which years produced the weapons Taiwan is still waiting for.
This universe of cases consists of items the U.S. State Department notified to Congress under the provisions of the Arms Export Control Act (Title 22, United States Code). Notifications are derived principally from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which maintained an archive of major arms sale notifications until early 2026. Further arms sale notifications are now sourced from the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. Sales are also found via the Congressional Record, which contains transmittals of sale notifications to the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees.
Case updates are derived from a variety of sources, including media updates from Taiwanese outlets (CNA, Focus Taiwan, Taipei Times, Liberty Times), U.S. Department of Defense contract announcements, Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense reports to the Legislative Yuan, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)'s Arms Transfers Database.
Maintenance, spare-parts, and training cases are omitted due to their low dollar amount and the difficulty of adequately tracking their progress. Until final delivery, a case remains in the dataset: because of this, full case values are included, not partial dollar values, which renders the topline number larger than what is still owed. Notified values are usually ceilings for cases, so expenditures are usually lower than what is publicly reported.
As written in the original methodology of the backlog, published in November 2023, traditional, asymmetric, and munitions categories of capabilities are defined as follows. Traditional weapons are "more capable and flexible than asymmetric weapons on a per-unit basis, but tend to have higher costs and require more advanced training." Asymmetric capabilities are defined as weapons that are "mobile, relatively low-cost, and counteract Chinese military advantages without emulating them." Munitions capabilities are defined as "reloads for various types of weapons" which could be categorized as either asymmetric or traditional.
Milestone updates are derived from the source that reports them, meaning that dates could be inaccurate. Year-only dates are drawn at mid-year, and year-only completion at year-end. Expected dates are what officials, documents or contracts stated at the time, and almost certainly have moved or slipped. TSM does not forecast hard dates for delivery of any case reflected in the backlog.
Category subtotals. The Traditional, Asymmetric and Munitions subtotals in this tool are summed from the individual cases: Traditional $12,927 million, Asymmetric $14,463 million and Munitions $2,329 million in September 2026, for a total of $29,719 million.