Taiwan's self-made army armored vehicles are all numbered with "CMXX", "C" stands for Made in China, and "M" follows the US military's practice of armored vehicles, with no punctuation between the alphabetic prefix and numerical suffix. The first number after that is the classification code, "1" represents the tank, "2" is the tracked armored vehicle, and "3" is the wheeled armored vehicle; and the second number is the order of development. Take the CM11 as an example, which represents "the first Chinese-made tank", and then the M48A3, which was improved with CM11 technology, came in behind to become the CM12; the CM21 imitated the American M113, "China's first self-made tracked armored personnel carrier." As for the CM31 6X6 wheeled armored vehicle that has not been put into mass production, it is "China's first self-made wheeled armored vehicle." In the 1970s, Taiwan successively imitated the American-made M101 105mm howitzer and M114 155mm howitzer, named 63A and 65 howitzers (They are all numbered according to the chronology of the Republic of China).
In addition to the lack of material knowledge for artillery manufacturing, Taiwan also lacks the smelting and welding technology of gun barrels. Basically, there is no technology to manufacture 155mm extended-range artillery shells or laser-guided artillery shells like the US military’s Copperhead.
The Army often only asks for something, with performance comparable to or close to the level of the US military or a certain country's active equipment. The rest is left to the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Armament Administration to find a way to produce it. Many of the R&D of the Armament Administration are officers with a background in the National Chiang Kai-Shek Institute of Science and Technology, and most of them are in logistics units. Their ideas and values often do not overlap with those of the Army's senior officers, who are mostly military officers and are in grass-roots units. The Ministry of National Defense does not have an integrated leadership platform, so they often talk and do their own things. As for the funding for research and development, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Armament Administration will raise it themselves or ask the Ministry of National Defense for money to make a prototype first. The Army will see if it is satisfactory and then decide whether to give money and take the next step.
The most classic came in the early years when the Army wanted the G5 wheeled 155 howitzer developed in South Africa, but it was too expensive, so they wanted to leave it to the Armaments Bureau (formerly the Joint Logistics) to find a way to produce similar equipment, but at the price they could only get about half of the G5, so Lianqin had to find a way to make steel by himself, and what he made was the XT-69 self-propelled cannon. Later, France sold the Kaiser wheeled self-propelled cannon to Taiwan. The Army wanted the vehicle but was stuck with no money. The French were not as easy-going as South Africa. Before the negotiations were completed, Taiwan’s Arms Bureau personnel were not given the opportunity to see the actual vehicle. The Ma government filed the Lafayette arbitration case. After being stabbed by France, the French original factory was not even willing to come to Taiwan for briefings.
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