Taiwan’s long-range radar, the Surveillance Radar Program (SRP), might already have been compromised by China, according to a Jane’s Defence Weekly report.
Quoting Washington and Taipei sources, this week’s edition says that China has built a large radar system of its own that can interfere with Taiwan’s SRP signals, adding that China has a political motivation to match Taiwan’s huge investment in the radar system.
“By doing so, Beijing demonstrates that it can win the arms race with Taipei — a move that could be part of a wider propaganda campaign to demoralize Taiwan and increase the pressure for unification,” the magazine said.
Meanwhile, the Washington Times reported in a front-page story that there is “rising domestic resistance” in Taiwan to US pressure to expand a missile defense system on in Taiwan that could detect long-range missile threats from China.
Quoting a delegation of “high-level Taiwanese diplomats,” the newspaper reported that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been “enduring so much domestic pressure” from voters questioning why the nation needs towers to detect long-range missiles that would not target Taiwan.
The charges came directly from the leader of the delegation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of Policy Planning Director-General Jieh Wen-chieh (介文汲), during a meeting with editors and reporters at the newspaper.
It was a “rare public acknowledgment of rising domestic resistance,” the newspaper said.
Later, US Congressional sources in Washington with close ties to Taiwan said they were “completely unaware” of any significant resistance to the radar installations.
US House of Representatives Armed Services seapower subcommittee chairman Randy Forbes has called for the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency to explore the costs and benefits of merging Taiwan’s early-warning radar with US missile and sensor systems.
A number of radar installations have been built along Taiwan’s western coastline and Jieh told the Washington Times that some in Taiwan are resisting the idea of expanding the system.
He said the Ma administration believed the radar system helped both Taiwan and the US.
Jieh is quoted as saying: “It’s not my personal criticism, but a lot of people’s criticism in Taiwan is that: ‘Hey, why do we, Taiwan, need such big radar towers that can detect the inner land of mainland China? We don’t need that actually.’ That’s some people’s argument.”
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
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