The air force will upgrade the radar system for French-made Mirage 2000-5 fighter planes to enable them to have anti-cruise missile capabilities, according to a defense source.
The radar upgrade project will focus on enhancing the ability of the 2000-5's radar to include the area beneath the plane. It is to proceed with technical support from the French manufacturer of the plane -- Dassault.
After the upgrade, the Mirage 2000-5 should be capable of spotting and tracking cruise missiles fired from China. It is equipped to destroy cruise missiles with the air-to-air missiles it carries, including the medium-range Mica and short-range Magic.
These capabilities might neutralize, to some extent, the threat that China's cruise missiles now pose. A defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was still much room for the improvement of the capabilities of the 2000-5's radar system.
"Besides its look-down capabilities, the radar of the Mirage can also be upgraded to have ground- attack capabilities. But our priority now is to have anti-cruise missile capabilities," the official said.
The current radar of the Mirage already has certain look-down capabilities, but they are not enough for the detection and tracking of cruise missiles.
Chang Li-teh (張立德), a senior editor with Defense Technology Monthly magazine, explained the difference between the radar before and after the upgrade.
"Before the upgrade, the radar was able to spot a variety of targets in the mountains below or on the sea. But it could not be sure what the targets were, because there are so many different kinds of waves sent back from the surface at the same time," Chang said.
"After the upgrade, the radar should be able to more accurately sort out the surface targets by their speeds. Surface targets moving below the speed of 300kph will be automatically be excluded from the radar screen," he said.
"The theory is that cruise missiles often fly toward targets at speeds between 700 and 800kph. Supersonic cruise missiles might also be detected," he said.
"If the Mirage is able to see the cruise missiles on its radar screen, it should have no problem firing missiles to destroy them. Both Mica and Magic missiles can be used against cruise missiles, depending on the range of the targets to the plane."
After the radar upgrade, the Mirage is expected to become an effective neutralizer of this growing threat from China's cruise missiles.
The E-2T early warning aircraft bought from the US was once said to be able to detect and track cruise missiles, but tests here show no such capability.
In a test-firing of the domestically-built Hsiung Feng-II anti-ship missile in recent years, an E-2T monitoring the test was not able to detect and track the missile skimming over the ocean's surface, Chang quoted an air force official as saying.
An anti-ship missile is similar in some ways to a cruise missile, but it lacks the sophisticated capabilities of the latter, such as terrain-mapping.
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