"This is troubling news,” said Toshi Yoshihara, associate professor of strategy at the US Naval War College and an expert on the PLAN. “Taiwan is already in a precarious strategic position given emerging doubts about its capacity to withstand a knockout blow from Chinese missile barrages.”
Given the facility’s role in monitoring enemy troop movement, it would likely be a primary target for such attacks by China.
“If Taiwan hopes to assert some level of sea control over its littoral environment in accord with its current naval strategy, then it needs the capabilities to maintain the maximum level of battlefield awareness at sea,” he said.
Officials with the Pentagon and the NSA refused to comment on the fence situation.
A US intelligence official said the “Taiwanese intelligence picture” was “too sensitive” to discuss even off the record.
A retired US naval officer who once held a very senior position at the Pentagon and speaking on the strict understanding of anonymity said he was particularly surprised that security had not been tightened over the past few weeks as the crisis in the Korean Peninsula developed.
With the US Navy set to join South Korea in naval exercises, Taiwan may be expected to monitor the PLAN very closely.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former National Security Council official under former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration said no civilian officials, be they from the Democratic Progressive Party or the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), have paid attention to security at the base, as it is a purely military site. Defense News said the Marine Corps’ 77th Regiment is responsible for security at Linyuan
“I paid several visits to the base,” the former official said. “Wandering cows will not pose any threat to operations at the OTD. All sensitive materials are processed in confined rooms, some even guarded.”
“The Chinese tourist [Ma Zhongfei, 馬中飛] who was caught in an MND recruitment center in Taipei [in May last year] is no less important than [lax security at] the OTD,” he said.
Asked to comment on the situation, ministry spokesman Yu Sy-tue (虞思祖) told the Taipei Times that he contacted the facility in Linkou and was told that the situation, including cows walking around, happened two years ago and that it has since been fixed with wire fences and that “security is now good.”
The Defense News and Kyodo reporters conducted their latest trip to Linyuan one week ago.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY RICH CHANG
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