With the procurement and deployment of three additional Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile batteries, 70 percent of Taiwan's population and 60 percent of its industrial facilities will be under the theater missile defense system's protection, according to a report released yesterday by the Ministry of National Defense (MND).
Minister of National Defense Lee Jye (
A MND official who asked to remain anonymous released major portions of the report's text to local media yesterday.
The proposal said the procurement of the PAC-3 batteries is an efficient military investment.
The MND official said that according to the proposal, Taiwan has deployed 200 PAC-2 interceptors in northern Taiwan to protect the capital.
With the procurement of three additional PAC-3 batteries with 384 missiles, a total of 584 missiles will be deployed in northern, central and southern Taiwan, and major cities and military facilities of the west coast would be under the protective umbrella of the theater missile defense system, the report said.
The proposal said that 70 percent of Taiwan's population and 60 percent of its industrial facilities would be under the system's protection, the official said.
With the deployment of 584 interceptor missiles, Taiwan could survive a first strike from a People's Liberation Army (PLA) missile attack, the report said.
According to the report, the "highly agile hit-to-kill interceptor" has an 80 percent chance of intercepting an incoming ballistic missile, he added.
The proposal said that, although the US sold Japan and the Netherlands PAC-3 interceptors at the price of US$3.2 million per missile, it has proposed selling the missiles to Taiwan at the lower price of US$3.01 million per missile.
However, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Wen-chung (
Since the legislature has so far blocked the special arms budget, the ministry has made the procurement of eight diesel-powered submarines and 12 P-3C maritime patrol aircraft a priority, Lee added.
Meanwhile, a military expert questioned the effectiveness of the Patriot anti-missile system.
Lin Tsung-ta (
Lin said China currently had an arsenal of more than 700 short-range ballistic missiles on the coast opposite Taiwan.
He said that accordiong to the "two plus two theory," a defender must simultaneously launch four missiles -- two Theater High-Altitude Area Defense missiles and two Patriots -- for each incoming missile in order to have a 95 percent probability of intercepting it. To achieve that success rate, Taiwan would therefore need nearly 3,000 missiles to effectively counter China's short-range ballistic missile threat.
He said the 584 anti-missiles was far from the huge number of missiles Taiwan really needed, and that therefore Taiwan should focus on deterrent weapons instead.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching