Israeli-made drone aircraft at the heart of a fierce political row between Israel and the US are likely to be a key element of any Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a Taiwanese military analyst said yesterday.
The US has imposed a series of tough military sanctions against Israel to pressure it to confiscate "Harpy" drone aircraft parts that China returned to state-owned manufacturer Israel Aircraft Industries last year.
Israel says the return was for routine maintenance, but Washington contends it was for an important technological upgrade. Israeli military officials have said work on the Harpy deal has been frozen.
With a range of 500km, the Harpy has the ability to locate and destroy enemy radar facilities. US officials fear China could use it to compromise the defense of Taiwan and endanger US military forces in the Pacific.
Milton Liao of the Council of Advanced Political Studies said the Harpy could be used in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to destroy the nation's radar capabilities -- including those on its Patriot anti-missile system -- as part of gaining air superiority over the Taiwanese military.
Once air superiority was obtained, he said, the way would be cleared for a full-scale Chinese invasion across the Taiwan Straits.
The Harpy operates by overflying enemy air defenses, identifying the location of enemy radar installations through the electronic signals they emit, and then destroying them with a 32kg explosive payload.
Liao said the Harpy's effectiveness is enhanced by its small size -- it is only 2.1m long with a wingspan of 2.7m -- which makes it difficult for enemy radar to detect, allowing it to loiter around potential targets for extended periods of time.
He said that in any Chinese invasion of Taiwan it would be far more important than the other main anti-radar weapon in the Chinese inventory, the J-5, an aging MiG-type aircraft transformed by Chinese technicians into an unmanned drone vehicle in 2002.
A former US government official with long experience analyzing the Chinese military backed Liao's analysis. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. Taiwanese military officials declined to comment on the Harpy controversy.
Earlier this month, Israeli officials and media reports said the US had imposed a series of tough sanctions on the Israeli arms industry since the beginning of the year, escalating tensions between the two allies over Israeli military sales to China.
COSTLY TECH FAILURE: More than 25,000 files for nearly 8,000 students from 81 schools were lost when system administrators updated a server, the Ministry of Education said The academic records of 7,854 high-school students have been lost due to a hard-drive failure, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The records were being stored at National Chi Nan University, which was commissioned by the ministry’s K-12 Education Administration to host a computer server of student portfolios that universities could access to evaluate their applications. Under a program introduced in 2019 for high-school students starting that year, students are to create portfolios to be used for university applications, which include their grades, extracurricular activities and other information related to their character and achievements. System administrators discovered that files were missing when rebooting
921 EARTHQUAKE: The magnitude 7.3 quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged The Central Weather Bureau yesterday received about 50,000 views on Facebook after it posted the data that it collected on Sept. 21, 1999, when the nation was devastated by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake. The data showed that the 921 Earthquake hit the nation at 1:47am, with the epicenter being 7km southwest of the bureau’s quake detection center in Nantou County’s Yuchi Township (魚池) at a depth of 8km. The quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged, with the cost of the damage estimated at NT$300 billion (US$10.8 billion at the current
CONFUSING RESULTS: A New Taipei City worker tested positive for COVID-19 in a rapid test and a PCR test, but negative in a traditional nucleic acid test, the CECC said Travelers from Bangladesh, Brazil and Peru are no longer required to quarantine at a government center, and from Saturday can choose to quarantine at hotels, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The three nations are no longer considered “key high-risk countries,” as their COVID-19 case numbers have continued to fall, the CECC said, adding that no travelers from these countries have been confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 in the past two months. The revised classification would allow travelers from the three countries to choose where they stay during their mandatory 14-day quarantine, although they would be required to pay
‘TECHNICALITY’: The full moon was at 7:55am, but the Taipei Astronomical Museum said it technically remained a ‘real’ full moon when it rose again at night The Mid-Autumn Festival had a “real” full moon, the first time the astronomical categorization has fallen on the day of the festival since 2013, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said yesterday. The festival, which falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar — which this year was yesterday — does not always coincide with an exact full moon, the museum said. A full moon occurs when the Earth is between the sun and the moon — or, more precisely, when the ecliptic longitudes of the sun and the moon differ by 180° — which has a cycle of
RSS