RICHMOND, Virginia (Reuters) – Taiwan portrayed the Obama administration on Monday as yielding to pressure from China to curb arms sales to the self-ruled island, renewing its push for 66 new Lockheed Martin Corp F-16 multi-role fighter aircraft.

“These years, China is showing stronger and stronger reaction to U.S.-Taiwan arms sales, and that (has) turned your country more wary with arms sales,” Andrew Yang, the deputy defense minister, told an annual U.S.-Taiwan defense industry conference running through Tuesday in Virginia.

The Obama administration informally told U.S. lawmakers late on Friday that it would upgrade Taiwan’s existing 140-plus F-16 A/B jets while holding off on a request for the relatively advanced F-16 C/Ds, the latest model.

Yang said Taiwan’s top military hardware needs were the new fighters plus diesel electric submarines — transfers that Beijing appears to oppose above all other arms supplies to Taiwan to date.

The new planes would replace antiquated F-5s “to maintain air superiority across the Taiwan Strait in the near future,” he said in prepared comments distributed to reporters outside the closed-door event.

They would offer “irreplaceable deterrence capabilities” as part of a modernized force to defend Taiwan, deter conflicts and bolster regional security, Yang said.

All U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are strongly opposed by China, which claims the self-ruled island as its own. Beijing has declined to renounce the use of force to bring Taiwan into its fold despite steady progress in cross-Straits relations.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The State Department is declining for the first time to address an annual industry conference on defense and security ties between the United States and Taiwan, the event’s organizer said.

U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are a major sore spot with China, which regards the self-ruled island as its own. Still, the State Department has sent one of its senior officials to speak at the event each year for the past nine years, Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council, told Reuters in a telephone interview late Tuesday.

“It’s certainly a disappointment,” he said, although a senior Pentagon official will address the conference.

This year marks the 10th in the series of such business council-organized conferences on arms sales and security ties with Taiwan. It is taking place in Richmond, Virginia, Sunday through Tuesday.

The State Department had no comment on why it was sitting out the event.

It falls 10 days before the Obama administration is due to make known its policy on Taiwan’s request to buy 66 late-model F-16 fighter planes built by Lockheed Martin Corp.

Since 2006, the United States has balked at providing the F-16 C/D models, potentially valued at more than $8 billion, apparently for fear of angering Beijing.

NEW YORK, Sept 14 (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department is declining for the first time to address an annual industry conference on defense and security ties between the United States and Taiwan, the event’s organizer said.

U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are a major sore spot with China, which regards the self-ruled island as its own. Still, the State Department has sent one of its senior officials to speak at the event each year for the past nine years, Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council, told Reuters in a telephone interview late Tuesday.

“It’s certainly a disappointment,” he said, although a senior Pentagon official will address the conference.

This year marks the 10th in the series of such business council-organized conferences on arms sales and security ties with Taiwan. It is taking place in Richmond, Virginia, Sunday through Tuesday.

The State Department had no comment on why it was sitting out the event.

It falls 10 days before the Obama administration is due to make known its policy on Taiwan’s request to buy 66 late-model F-16 fighter planes built by Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Since 2006, the United States has balked at providing the F-16 C/D models, potentially valued at more than $8 billion, apparently for fear of angering Beijing.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A squabble among arms companies over what to call the world’s most advanced warplanes could roil the competition for multibillion-dollar fighter contracts worldwide.

At issue is an esoteric term, “5th generation,” to describe aircraft designed to dodge detection by enemy radar even when loaded with their weapons.

The term is applied first and foremost by aerospace experts to Lockheed Martin Corp’s (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) F-22 and F-35 fighters, which are built to appear as small as a swallow on radar screens.

Boeing Co (BA.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), whose F/A-18 Super Hornet is set to compete against Lockheed’s F-35 worldwide, has been keen to suggest that the “5th generation” tag overstates any real-world advantages of the F-35, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter.

“I think it’s fair to say that the ’5th-generation’ terminology is a marketing terminology,” Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s chief executive for its defense business, told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense summit in Washington this week.

“We don’t operate in a world today where it’s an individual airplane against an individual threat,” he said. “It’s the combined forces and bringing all of those forces and their capabilities together.”

Boeing, the Pentagon’s No. 2 supplier by sales, is competing against Lockheed, the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier, and the Eurofighter GmbH consortium for a potential $6 billion contract for about 40 fighters in Japan.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fifty years after President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned the United States to guard against the “military-industrial complex,” the reality has changed and the term is outdated, the head of a group that represents arms makers said.

“The word ‘complex’ implies a larger and (more) interwoven industry than you have today,” Marion Blakey, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington on Thursday.

“In a sense it’s an old-fashioned term that’s outmoded,” she said. “It is more historical than a real-life term.”

The phrase generally signifies mutually reinforcing interests between the armed forces and the for-profit companies that produce their weapons and provide services.

The term also may be used to refer to ties with members of Congress crucial for political support for spending on weapons programs and enhanced by political contributions.

Eisenhower, in a farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961, cautioned against the “unwarranted acquisition of influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

Blakey’s group, known as the AIA, represents leading U.S. makers of everything from civil and military aircraft to space systems and missiles to unmanned weapons systems and aircraft engines.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Boeing Co (BA.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)> expects up to 30 percent of its security-related sales to come from abroad by 2013, a greater share than previously projected, the head of the company’s defense unit said on Wednesday.

Boeing originally had set a 25 percent target for such sales, compared with roughly 17 percent at the end of last year and about 7 percent five years ago.

The new goal “does represent a bit of a higher bar” than earlier, Dennis Muilenburg, chief executive of Boeing’s space, security and defense arm, told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington by teleconference.

“And some of the recent wins that we’ve had on the international front give us confidence that that’s not only an achievable level but a sustainable level,” he said.

The defense unit’s foreign successes have been broad-based spanning fighter jets, rotor craft, commercial derivatives aircraft and satellites, Muilenburg said.

“The fact that it is broad-based across our portfolio and across regions around the world does give us an added sense of momentum there,” he said.

Muilenburg described overseas demand as booming for border security, intelligence and homeland security products. He also predicted strong military aircraft sales, including the F-18 Super Hornet fighter.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Granting Taiwan’s politically sensitive request for new F-16 fighter aircraft would merely maintain the island’s air power capabilities, not boost them, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin Corp, the plane’s manufacturer, said on Tuesday.

“This isn’t an increase in Taiwan’s ability to defend itself,” Robert Stevens, Lockheed’s chief executive, told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington. “These are replacement airplanes that are requested to assure that there’s no degrading of the country’s ability to defend itself.”

Taiwan is seeking 66 late-model F-16 aircraft potentially valued at more than $8 billion to phase out its remaining F-5 fighters.

China strongly opposes U.S. arms sales to the self-ruled island which it deems an illegitimate breakaway province. The United States is committed under a 1979 law to supply Taiwan the arms it needs to maintain a “sufficient self-defense capability.”

The request for the new F-16s has been pending informally since 2006. Taiwan in 2009 also requested an upgrade to its 146 old F-16 A/B models. Then-President George H.W. Bush sold the first F-16s to Taiwan in 1992.

The issue of new F-16 C/D models is coming to a head partly because Lockheed Martin’s F-16 production line may be drawing to an end, with a backlog of 58 planes as of the end of August.

Unless there are new orders from Taiwan, Iraq, Oman or another country, Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier by sales, would have to start notifying suppliers within a few months that the last F-16 deliveries will come toward the end of 2013, Stevens said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Granting Taiwan’s politically sensitive request for new F-16 fighter aircraft would merely maintain the island’s air power capabilities, not boost them, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the plane’s manufacturer, said on Tuesday.

“This isn’t an increase in Taiwan’s ability to defend itself,” Robert Stevens, Lockheed’s chief executive, told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington. “These are replacement airplanes that are requested to assure that there’s no degrading of the country’s ability to defend itself.”

Taiwan is seeking 66 late-model F-16 aircraft potentially valued at more than $8 billion to phase out its remaining F-5 fighters.

China strongly opposes U.S. arms sales to the self-ruled island which it deems an illegitimate breakaway province. The United States is committed under a 1979 law to supply Taiwan the arms it needs to maintain a “sufficient self-defense capability.”

The request for the new F-16s has been pending informally since 2006. Taiwan in 2009 also requested an upgrade to its 146 old F-16 A/B models. Then-President George H.W. Bush sold the first F-16s to Taiwan in 1992.

The issue of new F-16 C/D models is coming to a head partly because Lockheed Martin’s F-16 production line may be drawing to an end, with a backlog of 58 planes as of the end of August.

Unless there are new orders from Taiwan, Iraq, Oman or another country, Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier by sales, would have to start notifying suppliers within a few months that the last F-16 deliveries will come toward the end of 2013, Stevens said.

WASHINGTON, Sept 6 (Reuters) – Granting Taiwan’s politically sensitive request for new F-16 fighter aircraft would merely maintain the island’s air power capabilities, not boost them, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the plane’s manufacturer, said on Tuesday.

“This isn’t an increase in Taiwan’s ability to defend itself,” Robert Stevens, Lockheed’s chief executive, told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington. “These are replacement airplanes that are requested to assure that there’s no degrading of the country’s ability to defend itself.”

Taiwan is seeking 66 late-model F-16 aircraft potentially valued at more than $8 billion to phase out its remaining F-5 fighters.

China strongly opposes U.S. arms sales to the self-ruled island which it deems an illegitimate breakaway province. The United States is committed under a 1979 law to supply Taiwan the arms it needs to maintain a “sufficient self-defense capability.”

The request for the new F-16s has been pending informally since 2006. Taiwan in 2009 also requested an upgrade to its 146 old F-16 A/B models. Then-President George H.W. Bush sold the first F-16s to Taiwan in 1992.

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Reuters Insider interview with Lockheed-Martin CEO:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lockheed Martin Corp’s (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) political backers are stepping up a drive to meet Taiwan’s request for 66 new F-16 fighter jets, a sale that would help the Pentagon’s largest supplier weather possible cuts to its big-ticket weapons programs.

Such a sale, valued at more than $8 billion, would anger China, which deems self-ruled Taiwan a wayward province subject to unification by force if necessary.

Arms sales will be among the subjects explored at the annual Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington September 6-8. Company executives, Pentagon officials and analysts will discuss projected cuts in U.S. military spending that nearly doubled in the decade after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Notwithstanding the possible harm to U.S.-China ties, nearly half of the 100 U.S. senators and 181 of the 435 members of the House of Representatives have urged President Barack Obama to move quickly to meet Taiwan’s F-16 request, informally pending since 2006.

“We are deeply concerned that further delay of the decision to sell F-16s to Taiwan could result in closure of the F-16 production line,” 45 senators said in a May 26 letter to Obama.

Economic arguments in favor of sensitive arms sales may gain traction as the U.S. jobless rate is stuck above 9 percent and campaigning for the 2012 elections is starting in earnest.

The Obama administration has begun consulting Congress on plans to sell Global Hawk spy planes made by Northrop Grumman (NOC.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to South Korea, Reuters reported this week. This would require a waiver of the Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR, a voluntary arms control pact involving at least 34 countries.