The US has successfully conducted another flight test of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system, intercepting a medium-range ballistic missile over the Pacific near Hawaii.
Senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center Rick Fisher said on Wednesday that the timing of the test “cannot be ignored.”
It was significant, he said, that the test was conducted after North Korea’s third nuclear test, its reported imminent test of a new ballistic missile and China’s “aggressiveness” in the East China Sea.
“A robust American missile defense capability is directly relevant to the security of Taiwan, Japan and South Korea in that it deters both North Korea and China by creating doubt about the success of their missiles,” Fisher said.
However, Fisher stressed that a purely missile defense strategy for Taiwan — or the US — was being made untenable by China’s and North Korea’s growing missile arsenals.
“It is simply too expensive for the defender to deter the numbers of missiles China and North Korea can produce,” he said.
It would be far more efficient, he said, to build offensive missiles that could hold Chinese and North Korean assets at risk “much as they are doing to the democracies in Asia.”
Fisher said that Washington had “quietly” changed its previous caution about allied Asian offensive missile capabilities.
He said it now needed to help “rationalize” new allied offensive missile capabilities if non-nuclear deterrence was to survive in Asia into the next decade.
The latest BMD test was carried out by US Navy sailors aboard the USS Lake Erie using a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block 1A guided missile.
A target ballistic missile was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii.
An in-orbit tracking system detected and tracked the target and the second-generation Aegis BMD weapon was launched five minutes later.
“The SM-3 maneuvered to a point in space and released its kinetic warhead,” a statement from the US Department of Defense said.
“The kinetic warhead acquired the target re-entry vehicle, diverted into its path, and, using only the force of a direct impact, engaged and destroyed the target,” the statement said.
“Initial indications are that all components performed as designed,” the Department of Defense said.
The Department of Defense said that the test was a demonstration of the ability of space-based “assets” to provide mid-course fire control quality data to an Aegis BMD ship “extending the battlespace, providing the ability for longer-range intercepts and defense of larger areas.”
It was the 24th successful intercept in 30 flight test attempts for the Aegis BMD program since flight testing began in 2002.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats