Taiwan and Japan should confront China’s aggressive maritime patrols by making simulated attacks against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) aircraft carrier Liaoning, retired US Navy admiral Dennis Blair said on Wednesday last week.
Blair, who served as national intelligence director under former US president Barrack Obama, made the remarks in an article discussing China’s maritime and air activity published on the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s Web site, an organization he chairs.
In the article, Blair said that Taiwan and Japan’s practice of scrambling their forces to intercept and escort each Chinese air and maritime patrol, which he termed “intercept everything,” is wasteful and counterproductive.
Photo: Xinhua via AP
Such operations use up valuable flying time, strain limited budgets and achieve little in terms of military value, while creating a pattern of reactions that the PLA could exploit in war, he wrote.
Under the “intercept everything” policy, Taiwan and Japan are degrading the combat readiness of their forces to defend their territory and lowering their ability to deter Chinese military aggression, he added.
Taiwanese and Japanese forces should instead make their response selective, unpredictable and unrevealing of their full capabilities, while exercising their right under international law to occasionally patrol near Chinese territory and ignore Chinese protests, he wrote.
“Taiwanese forces should take advantage of [the PLAN carrier’s] presence to carry out simulated attacks against the Liaoning, raising their own readiness and demonstrating the reality that the Liaoning is vulnerable under wartime conditions,” he wrote, adding that Taiwanese and Japanese should understand that it is wartime capabilities, not peacetime operations, that deter potential aggressors from taking military action.
The two nations’ leaders should communicate to their respective citizens that ship and aircraft movement in peacetime do not reflect their ability under wartime conditions, he wrote.
The Liaoning — a refurbished Kuznetsov-class vessel and China’s sole aircraft carrier — has participated in 10 patrols and drills near Taiwan, four of which occurred this year, including a launch and recovery exercise in the Pacific.
When asked to comment, a Ministry of National Defense official said the military deems the shadowing of Chinese aircraft and ships by our forces a necessary policy for national security.
The military’s ground-based missile batteries, warships and fighters are well armed with Hsiung Feng and Harpoon anti-ship missiles, the source added.
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
RSS