The submarine-launched harpoon missiles now being added to Taiwan’s military arsenal add a “new and important level of risk for a Chinese invasion force” an American expert said on Friday.
Delivery of the sea-skimming supersonic missiles with a range of about 125km was revealed this week by the Ministry of National Defense.
The sale has been in process since 2005 and was announced to the US Congress, as required by law, in 2008. However, it was not previously known that delivery was underway.
“Though this sale started during the Bush administration, it is also consistent with the Obama administration’s more recent interest in helping Taiwan improve its asymmetric military capabilities against attack from China,” International Assessment and Strategy Center (IASC) senior fellow Rick Fisher said.
Taiwan has only two Hai Lung-class submarines capable of using the harpoon, but if they each carry 10, they could seriously damage up to 20 large amphibious assault ships.
“When you add these submarine-launched cruise missiles to the air-launched harpoons already equipping Taiwan’s F-16s and its new land and ship-based supersonic Hsiung-Feng anti-ship missiles, Taiwan is clearly making progress toward assembling a missile-based deterrent,” Fisher said.
Fisher said the harpoons could be “critical” for Taiwan because the new “center of gravity” for a Chinese military attack against the island would be an invasion.
“This has been the focus of Taiwan-related Chinese military modernization and expansion activities for most of the past decade,” he said.
He added that Beijing feared democracy on Taiwan more than any other external political force and remained committed to its destruction.
Taiwan should do everything it can, he said, to reduce China’s confidence in the success of a military invasion.
“It is certainly in America’s long-term interest that a free Taiwan survive and thrive, so it would be logical for Washington to enable more asymmetric capabilities for Taiwan,” he said.
Fisher said that one way would be to help Taiwan develop accurate 300km to 400km range ballistic missiles that could carry large numbers of sensor-fused munitions. These are small food-can size munitions capable of finding a ship or tank and then firing an explosively-formed molten projectile that can cut through most armor.
“They could also be used to damage or sink a hundred of the ships that China would use for an invasion of Taiwan,” Fisher said, adding that China had recently developed and deployed its own sensor-fused munitions and so there would be no issue of military imbalance.
However, in an actual battle, the use of the munitions would favor the defender — Taiwan.
“With 50 missiles carrying 20 sensor-fused munitions each, Taiwan could threaten 1,000 Chinese invading platforms,” Fisher said.
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
ALLEGED SABOTAGE: The damage inflicted by the vessel did not affect connection, as data were immediately rerouted to other cables, Chunghwa Telecom said Taiwan suspects that a Chinese-owned cargo vessel damaged an undersea cable near its northeastern coast on Friday, in an alleged act of sabotage that highlights the vulnerabilities of Taipei’s offshore communications infrastructure. The ship is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company whose director is Chinese, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. An unidentified Taiwanese official cited in the report described the case as sabotage. The incident followed another Chinese vessel’s suspected involvement in the breakages of data cables in the Baltic Sea in November last year. While fishing trawlers are known to sometimes damage such equipment, nation states have also
RSS