Space technology development is an increasingly important and emerging sector. President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has emphasized the importance of the sector and identified it as one component of the government’s “six core strategic industries.”
On Feb. 18, the government approved a draft bill regulating space-based activities, promoting the development of space-related industries, and decoupling the National Space Organization from the Ministry of Science and Technology and making it an independent agency.
One aim would be to enable Taiwan-made rockets to launch locally made satellites, to enhance data-gathering capabilities on weather patterns, create images for meteorological applications and better forecast weather events.
Taiwan has dipped its toe in the space sector with its Formosat program, with the first satellite launched in 1999. The most recent, the Formasat-7 constellation, was launched in 2019.
Even though the involvement of Taiwan-made components and competencies has increased, and Taiwanese universities and large electronics firms have long been involved in the development of spacecraft components, subsystems and payloads, the components were often produced for one-off projects and were not commercialized, relying instead on public funding. If Taiwan wants to become more self-reliant, not only in hardware, but also in skills and training, it needs to take a more systematic and scaled-up approach. This is the objective of the latest push.
One way to do this would be to collaborate with other countries with more advanced competencies. In the current climate, India would be a good partner, for several reasons:
First, there are the existing affinities. India is one of the countries targeted by the government’s New Southbound Policy, and the two countries have warm relations, aided by shared concerns over an adversarial China. The two countries also have a need to develop sophisticated weather tracking technologies and skillsets, and India has a developed space sector, with proven space programs.
Working together on these projects would not only benefit Taiwan’s ability to develop hardware, and cultivate talent and competencies in an emerging sector, it would contribute to expertise in another, much-needed application of the technology: national defense.
For more than two decades, China has been developing space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that can now compete with those of the US. It has advanced capabilities, with military reconnaissance satellites supporting geospatial intelligence capabilities that enable it to see at night and through clouds. These technologies are crucial in the approach to potential conflict to monitor and assess what a hostile party is doing, in terms of deployment and positioning, location of production capabilities, and patterns of behavior.
Should conflict break out, they would be crucial for providing intelligence on troop movements, damage assessment, and also on supporting information such as telecommunications, navigation and weather.
It is also important to promote training of competency in researching, developing and manufacturing intelligence-gathering capabilities, as well as the ability to analyze the intelligence.
However, Taiwan has little hope in catching up with China, not just because of the fewer resources available, but also because of the long lead time that China has accrued.
The government should develop capabilities fine-tuned to Taiwan’s requirements and increase cooperation with other countries to develop local talent, but also avail itself of the increasingly sophisticated commercial options in the interim period.
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