All medium and long-range air defense missile units of the air force will be merged into a single unit under General Staff Headquarters, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday.
With Missile Command and its air defense units coming under the direct control of the ministry, reaction time will be quicker as the chain of command is shortened, which meets the requirements for air defense security, the ministry said.
Missile defense units, including the Patriot, Tien Kung and Hawk batteries, will be placed under Missile Command as of Thursday, the ministry said.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported that Lieutenant General Liao Jung-hsing (廖榮鑫) would become the head of Missile Command.
This will be the first major change to the nation’s air defense operations command structure since 2006, when various missile battalions were shifted to the air force’s air-defense artillery general headquarters, which is now the air-defense artillery command.
Following Thursday’s move, Oerlikon anti-aircraft artillery systems and the vehicle-mounted Tien Chien 1 missiles will form the backbone of the air force’s short-range air-defense capabilities.
The newspaper quoted an anonymous official as saying that the security situation in the Taiwan Strait had been dynamic in recent years.
Although the number of Chinese missiles targeting Taiwan — more than 1,000 — has not increased as dramatically as before, their accuracy and capabilities have increased, the official said.
While the cross-strait situation seems stable at present, the military threat from China has become more serious, the official said.
The military’s missile and anti-missile capabilities have improved in recent years, the official said.
In addition to procurement of Patriot-3 missiles from the US and deployment of the Tien Kung III missile, the Hsiung Feng IIE surface-to-surface cruise missile, which can hit targets in certain parts of China, has also been deployed.
The report said that one of the priorities for Taiwan’s military was to procure 600km to 800km-range cruise missiles like the Hsiung Feng IIE, which is similar to the US-made Tomahawk cruise missile.
The military plans to produce 245 Hsiung Feng IIEs, the report said.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS