Taiwan deployed CM-11 Brave Tiger tanks at the mouth of the Tamsui River during this year’s Han Kuang exercise, positioning the Cold War-era vehicles in fortified bunkers on the eastern shore to cover an approach that leads directly into central Taipei. The CM-11 Brave Tiger Tamsui deployment, observed during a Friday morning river drill, illustrates how Taipei is leaning on decades-old armour to hold a chokepoint that no modern replacement has yet been assigned to plug.
A hybrid tank built from Cold War leftovers
The CM-11 is, by design, an amalgamation. Each vehicle pairs the chassis of an M60A3, first introduced in the 1970s, with a turret derived from the M48A3 Patton, a design dating to the 1960s. The fire-control package comes from the M1 Abrams, though that system is itself over 40 years old. The main armament is a 105-mm M68A1 tank gun with a direct-fire range of about 1.25 miles, comfortably enough to cover the Tamsui’s width of roughly three-quarters of a mile.
According to Global Military, development of the CM-11 began in 1984, undertaken jointly by General Dynamics and the Republic of China Army Armored Vehicle Development Center. Two prototypes were completed in 1988, and the vehicle was publicly introduced on 14 April 1990, the same year it entered service with Taiwanese forces.
That provenance matters for understanding what the army is and is not asking the Brave Tiger to do. Ben Lewis, an American analyst and founder of PLATracker, a website that monitors Chinese forces’ movements in the Indo-Pacific, spotted the tanks at the Tamsui drill and told Business Insider that their role was consistent with their limitations. ‘For tanks that are as old as the CM-11, using them for support to engineering units and in static positions is logical,’ Lewis said. ‘The armor on these tanks is not suitable for protection against modern anti-tank weaponry or tank-to-tank combat.’
The Tamsui’s strategic value and the CM-11 Brave Tiger’s role there
The Tamsui River is about three-quarters of a mile wide and opens a route from the Taiwan Strait into the heart of Taipei, where Taiwan’s presidential office, defence ministry, and military command centre are located. During the drill, Taiwanese troops entered the river on American-made M3 amphibious bridging vehicles, dropping pontoons and clusters of barrels rigged to explode. At least three CM-11 Brave Tiger tanks, stationed less than three miles from the river mouth, provided overwatch from fixed, camouflaged positions.
Lewis assessed the vehicles as providing fire support for the engineering troops and divers laying mines. In that static role, the Brave Tiger’s main gun can cover the full span of the river, giving it the ability to ambush or deter incoming landing craft or amphibious vessels.
Taiwan fields about 450 Brave Tigers in total, a figure that looks thin set against China’s roughly 6,000 tanks, nearly half of which are light enough to cross the strait in a landing operation. A veteran local analyst told Business Insider that Taiwan’s armoured vehicles, outnumbered and likely to face Chinese air support, would serve the island better by holding chokepoints or mounting ambushes rather than meeting Chinese armour in open combat.
Lewis also noted that Taiwan has been modernising its forces, but continues to keep older platforms, including towed guns, support vehicles, and tanks, in active service. Taipei has received 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks as a modern spearhead, but the Brave Tigers are not simply awaiting retirement: Wikipedia’s entry on the CM-11 records that Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence allocated $6.6 million in 2017 to develop upgrades for the country’s M60A3-based fleet, suggesting the platforms were expected to remain in service for some years beyond that point.
The Tamsui drill also carried an echo from the conflict in Ukraine, where drones and a mine-laden frontline have made tank-on-tank engagements rare. Kyiv has placed older tanks, such as the T-64, in concealed positions to provide indirect fire from beyond line of sight. In May, one unit used an Italian B1 Centauro tank destroyer to strike a Russian-held house about 11 kilometres away.
Business Insider reported that it has reached out to Taiwan’s defence ministry for comment on the use of the CM-11 Brave Tiger at the Tamsui drill; no response had been received at time of publication.