Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile systems were moved to the Hualien and Taitung areas ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday to ensure that Taiwan’s southeastern border is adequately defended in case of an attack, sources at the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said.
The relocation was prompted by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force conducting several training missions around Taiwanese airspace over the past few months and a Chinese naval group consisting of China’s sole aircraft carrier and five other vessels sailing as close as 20 nautical miles (37km) of Taiwan’s southeastern air defense zone, the sources said.
The group sailed 90 nautical miles south of Pingtung County’s Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip, as it headed for the western Pacific Ocean on a long-distance training mission, they said.
Screengrab from Lockheed Martin’s Web site
Air defenses in the area had previously relied mainly on Hawk anti-aircraft missiles, which only have a range of 40km, and the ministry had been planning to retire them as they are outdated, the sources said.
Hawk missiles were first deployed in Taiwan in 1959.
The ministry is planning to replace Hawk missiles with Tien Kung III surface-to-air missiles, but as there is a backlog in the new system’s production line, PAC-3 systems have been deployed to the nation’s east coast for the interim, they said.
Tien Kung III missiles were developed by the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, and are manufactured in Taiwan.
Meanwhile, ministry officials said that Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) — which was originally conceived as a rectangle — is missing a corner in the southeast due to an agreement with the US dating back to 1959, when the US cited fighter jets flying from Japan’s Ryuku Islands to the Philippines straying into Taiwan’s ADIZ and asked Taiwanese military officials to scale back the zone.
As a result, the distance between the southeast border of the ADIZ and Taiwan proper was shortened, the officials said, but added that PAC-3 missiles stationed on the east coast would help offset the shortened response time.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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