Taiwan's military appears keen on placing orders for an unmanned aerial vehicle developed by the Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology, an official with the Institute said yesterday.
The unmanned vehicle, named the Chung Shyang II (
The Chung Shan Institute introduced a scaled-down version of the vehicle to the public for the first time yesterday at the 2001 Taipei Aerospace Technology Exhibition.
The Chung Shyang II, under development since 1998, has now entered production.
"We are pretty confident the three branches of the military will place orders for the product. Even the Coast Guard Administration has shown an interest in buying it," said a Chung Shan Institute official who declined to be identified.
"The unit cost of the product is now around NT$30 million, but this will drop once mass-production begins."
This is the first time the Chung Shan Institute has suggested that the Chung Shyang II may be ordered by all three branches of the military. The institute is now working on Chung Shyang III, a much more powerful variant of Chung Shyang II.
"The Chung Shyang III is to be developed mainly for the air force, which needs an unmanned aerial vehicle capable of flying to China on reconnaissance missions," the official said. "The army and navy do not have such requirements. They will buy the Chung Shyang II to carry out missions ranging from day/night surveillance and reconnaissance, target acquisition and designation, artillery spotting, battle damage assessment and communications relay," the official said.
The Chung Shyang II can stay in the air for as long as 12 hours and it has a range of 200km, he said.
Meanwhile, the Aerospace Industrial Development Corp announced that its Tiger 2000 project to upgrade the air force's 300 retired F-5E fighters is nearing completion. The original deadline was for the end of last year.
Jeff Wu (
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