Paraguay has not flown a jet combat aircraft since 2003, when the last Aermacchi-derived AT-26 Xavantes were retired. It has never flown a supersonic one. Now it is looking at a country 18,000 kilometres away that has just retired the largest fleet of Northrop F-5s the world has ever seen.

Taiwan operated 336 Tiger IIs. It has no further use for them. Paraguay is one of the last dozen states on earth that still recognises Taipei rather than Beijing. The arithmetic more or less writes itself.

Whether it actually happens is another matter entirely.

What Was Actually Announced, and What Was Not

On 10 July 2026, at the 92nd anniversary of the Battle of Ballivián, President Santiago Peña confirmed that jet training aircraft would arrive through an agreement with Taiwan. He did not name a type. Senior air force officers declined to specify one.

The F-5 and AT-3 names came later, from Paraguayan and Argentine defence press reporting in mid-August, following a visit to Paraguay by General Tian Zhong-Yi, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Republic of China Air Force, who toured the air force’s First Air Brigade at Luque and was decorated by Paraguayan authorities.

Everything beyond that, including the reported figure of 10 to 15 aircraft and a 2027 start, rests on a single outlet. No transfer has been confirmed by Asunción or Taipei. This is an evaluation, and it should be read as one.

The Case Against, in One Number

An F-5 costs roughly $5,000 an hour to fly. An A-29 Super Tucano costs $1,000 to $1,200. One Tiger II hour buys four or five Super Tucano hours.

And Paraguay’s actual security problem is not an air-to-air one. It is irregular air traffic across remote borders, smuggling flights, and the slow patient work of watching a lot of empty sky. That is precisely what the A-29 was built for, which is why Paraguay bought six of them, and why the fifth arrived at the First Air Brigade on 21 August 2026 with the sixth due at the end of September.

There is also a cautionary precedent close to home. Brazil bought 11 ex-Jordanian F-5E/Fs in 2009 for $21 million, then spent $153 million modernising them. The airframes are the cheap part. Making a 1970s fighter useful in the 2020s is not.

The Case For Is Not Really About Fighting

Argentina is fielding ex-Danish F-16s. Brazil flies modernised F-5EMs and Gripens. Bolivia’s K-8W trainers are subsonic. A Paraguayan supersonic capability would be modest, but it would exist, and in a region where air forces are measured against neighbours, existing counts.

It is also a training pipeline. Paraguay is building toward a new radar system entering service from early 2027, and its pilots have flown alongside F-5s at the Salitre and CRUZEX exercises. An air force with jets can train jet pilots. One without them cannot.

The Taiwanese angle matters too. Taipei has already donated UH-1H helicopters to Asunción, four of them delivered in August 2025. Military transfers are one of the few concrete things Taiwan can offer the diplomatic partners it has left, and Paraguay is the biggest of them.

Whether a 40-year-old Tiger II is a gift or a liability is the question Paraguay now has to answer. Nobody has answered it yet.

Sources: Asunción Journal, 16 August 2026; Zona Militar, 15, 18 and 21 August and 10 July 2026; Army Recognition, 18 August 2026. Presidential quotation translated from the original Spanish.