On Dec. 12, an explosive device was found next to the offices of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Houbi District (後壁) chapter in Tainan.
Although police resolved the crisis after arresting a suspect on Dec. 14, Japanese international affairs academic Genki Fujii on the same day brought up security concerns for the candidates in next month’s elections at a seminar in Taipei, where he was delivering a speech. These two separate events make it clear that security risks for the upcoming elections are greater than they have been in the past.
During the seminar, which addressed the issue of strengthening the strategic partnership between Japan and Taiwan and was organized by the Formosa Republican Association at National Taiwan University’s College of Social Sciences, Fujii specifically referred to a report by the Chinese-language newspaper Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) about US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs David Stilwell calling on Beijing not to meddle in Taiwan’s upcoming elections.
Fujii warned that Taiwanese should remain alert ahead of next month’s elections, because China might go to extremes in attempts to interfere and invalidate the elections as the campaign has now entered garbage time since the outcome already seems to have been decided.
This is not the first time that Fujii has voiced such warnings. At a seminar in Tokyo on Dec. 8, he cited the assassination attempt on then-presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) on the eve of the presidential election in 2004 and the shooting of KMT Central Committee member Sean Lien (連勝文) in 2010 when he was campaigning in support of then-Taipei County Councilor Chen Hung-yuan’s (陳鴻源) re-election bid.
The National Security Bureau’s (NSB) Special Service Command Center on Nov. 7 announced the establishment of a security task force comprised of 330 special agents dedicated to protecting presidential and vice presidential candidates. During the unit’s inauguration ceremony, the NSB displayed various kinds of equipment that would be at the disposal of the task force, and the special agents showcased their bajiquan (八極拳) martial art techniques along with their pistol shooting skills.
While the bureau seems to have set up a dragnet to ensure the safety of all candidates, their security is not completely guaranteed, judging from the abundance of aerial footage and pictures taken at campaign rallies staged by every pair of presidential and vice presidential candidates. The neverending supply of such images online, taken by uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV), is evidence that there are loopholes in the dragnet — the security threat coming from the air.
Assassination by UAV is not a whimsical idea that only appears in movies. During “the INTERPOLITEX 2019 — the 23rd International Homeland Security Exhibition” held in Moscow in late October, the Russian Air Force’s leading military education institution, the Gagarin Air Force Academy, along with UAV manufacturers, proposed the drone swarm attack concept, which they dubbed “Flock-93” and that resembles the plot in the US movie Angel Has Fallen.
The idea of deploying a drone swarm attack with more than 100 drones, each carrying explosives, on targets as far as 153km away highly resembles China’s concept of a swarm assault using commercial off-the-shelf drones, which was reported by Jane’s Defence Weekly back in 2017.
Upon chronological analysis, the Russian UAV design concept likely originates from Russia’s close military exchanges with China, and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army might be more skilled at drone warfare applications.
Although the NSB’s Special Service Command Center is equipped with drone-jamming devices, a few UAV models manufactured by Chinese drone manufacturing giant DJI (大疆創新科技), to cite just one, are operated on frequencies outside the effective range of the drone-jamming devices assigned to Taiwan’s special task force.
In its product specifications, DJI emphasizes the company’s application of frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology, which enables its drones to effectively resist interference.
In terms of the ability to interfere with drones’ satellite-based radio navigation system, known as the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), the jammers issued to Taiwan’s special task force are designed only to interfere with the US-owned Global Positioning System (GPS), while all models developed by DJI also support Russia’s GLONASS as an alternative to GPS. Designed to interfere with just the US system, the jammers used by Taiwan’s special task force expose another potential security loophole.
The elections next month not only represent the Taiwanese people’s persistence in protecting its democracy, it also represents an important choice about the nation’s future. The safety of all candidates must not be compromised in any way.
Lu Li-shih is a former instructor at the Republic of China Naval Academy and former captain of the ROCS Hsin Chiang.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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