A former top Pentagon official for Indo-Pacific policy told a Taipei security forum that Washington must actually deliver the weapons Taiwan has already bought, framing faster arms sales as the main way to push back a looming conflict.

• Jedidiah Royal, who ran Indo-Pacific defense policy until retiring in August, said "Taipei has no better friend than Washington" and called for speeding up key arms deliveries.
• He described two clocks: a "threat clock" ticking toward war, and a "delivery clock" of actual weapons arriving — speeding the second slows the first.
• Despite friction over the past year or two, he said the basic US-Taiwan relationship has not changed and practical needs keep pulling both sides together.
• Taiwan cannot build enough drones alone, so he pushed regional teamwork: Australian test sites, Japanese robotics, and Philippine labor and location.
• He warned that in a war in this region, US forces would depend on factories and supply lines they do not own, making stockpiles and industrial capacity equally urgent.

Outlook: A formal multilateral alliance is unlikely in the next few years, but defense industry links across the region will likely tighten, and Royal is personally building production, research, and testing sites along the first island chain.