Though seen as one of the biggest threats to the security of Taiwan, China's M-class ballistic missiles can do little beyond causing panic among the people if actually used against Taiwan, analysts at the top military academic institute said yesterday.
"The `terrorizing' effects of the M-class missiles far outweigh any real damage they can inflict. The public should be aware of this fact and not panic about M-class missile attacks," said ROC Navy Captain Chang Chin (張競) of the National Defense University (NDU).
Citing the M-9 missile as an example, Chang said, "The payload of the missile's conventional warhead is quite limited. It can only cause a crater that is 10m deep and 30m in diameter. But people in general vastly overestimate their destructive power."
Chang's comments were based upon the assumption that China would use only conventional warheads, rather than nuclear ones, against Taiwan.
"Knowing that the international community would be outraged, China is not likely to use nuclear warheads against us," Chang said.
"The most possible attack scenario is that China would use M-class missiles armed with conventional warheads to strike our most vital civilian and military facilities," Chang said.
Chang made the remarks during a press conference at Taoyuan County's NDU which focused on China's ballistic missile developments and Taiwan's subsequent countermeasures.
The other aspect of China's M-class missiles which tends to be exaggerated or misunderstood, Chang said, is their accuracy, which in military terminology is called CEP (circular error, probable).
"[The Chinese claim] the CEP of an M-9 missile is 150m to 300m. But such figures are only worthy of taking into account if they are statistically significant.
An accurate CEP for a certain missile can only be calculated after the missile has undergone tens of thousands of tests," Chang said.
"China cannot afford to launch that many tests for any single missile. So the figure it has announced for the M-9 missile's CEP is probably only 50 percent accurate," he said.
Making additional comment on the issue, NDU's war college vice dean Major General Tyson Fu (扶台興) said the M-9 can sometimes hit a target zone accurately and sometimes miss by a great margin.
"According to publicly available data, the M-9 has missed a target zone by as much as 1.7km. But its accuracy has also been recorded to within 50m," Fu said.
The M-9 and the later-developed M-11 missiles were fired by the Chinese military into seas off Taiwan during the Taiwan Strait crisis stretching from the summer of 1995 to March 1996.
The two types of missiles are considered by the local military to be the biggest threat to the security of Taiwan until a proper air defense shield is in place.
"Our current missile defense capability is built upon US-made Patriot PAC-2Plus and domestically-developed Tien Kung [Sky Bow] missiles. These missiles can defend Taiwan against incoming M-class missiles within the atmosphere," Chang said.
"But whether the debris of missiles destroyed by Patriots or Tien Kungs in mid-air could cause casualties or damage on the ground has yet to be determined," he said.
Chang also called on the public to attend to the consolidation of the civil defense mechanism to offset the any panic China's M-class missiles could wreak.
"Every year we stage the island-wide `Wang-an' anti-air raid exercise. If we do not take the exercise seriously, we will pay a heavy price in war," Chang warned.
"People have, for instance, converted underground shelters into coffee shops, KTV parlors or other business establishments while neglecting the fact that these basements can be very good air raid shelters in war," he said.
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