Taiwan's newly established Coast Guard Administration (CGA) has plans to establish a "three-dimensional" monitoring capability and an island-wide surveillance system as one of its future functions, said the new director Wang Chun (王郡).
"The three-dimensional monitoring capability is to be developed through the build-up of on-the-shore, coastal, ocean-going and air forces. We hope to reach the goals in a given time, but we know that we are still in the infancy stage compared to coast guard forces of advanced countries," Wang said.
Wang said the coast guard also has ambitious plans to have three 5,000-tonne large-sized vessels built. The 5,000-tonne ship will dwarf any warship presently in service in the navy.
So far, the biggest ships operational in the coast guard are eight 1,900-tonne vessels handed over from the customs authorities.
"We have not made a final decision on whether to go ahead with the 5,000-tonne ship building plan. We have to consider many factors, especially the cost," Wang said.
Officials with the CGA said the 5,000-tonne ships would be equipped with helicopters, which would significantly upgrade the search and rescue capability of the coast guard.
The ship building plan is just one part of Wang's project to develop a three-dimensional monitoring system, which could cover areas from the coast to the sea, and from the ground to the air.
Wang said the purpose of the "three dimensional" approach was to carry out missions from the coast to the high seas.
"Our aim is to effectively enforce law within our 200 nautical mile economic zone. We hope to achieve it, though it is not going to be an easy job," Wang said.
In addition to the upgrade in the coast guard's monitoring capability, Wang said another priority was to establish a surveillance network around the island using high-tech equipment as well as personnel networking.
"Taiwan has a coastline of 1,500km. We do not expect our surveillance systems to cover every spot along the coast. We will build it selectively on spots prone to smuggling activities," Wang said.
Officials with the CGA said the surveillance system, comprised of radar, infrared sensors, sonar, as well as image scanning equipment, costs around NT$20 million for every kilometer. The total cost will run as high as NT$160 billion if the system is to comprehensively cover the coastline.
Because of budgetary constraints, Wang said the CGA will look to civilians for assistance in establishing a toll-free hotline to report unusual sightings off or along the coast.
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
RSS