"Taiwan will go ahead," said Andrew Yang (
Chang and other experts are confident that the land attack cruise missile, the Hsiung Feng-2E, developed at the Taiwan military's Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, could soon be in production. "I am sure it is almost ready," Chang said.
In March, the Washington-based Defense News reported that this missile had been tested on Feb. 2 at the Jiupeng testing range in Pingtung County on Taiwan's southeastern coast. The newspaper reported that the Ministry of National Defense had confirmed the test without giving any further details.
Defense analysts note that Taiwan publicly acknowledged for the first time this year that offensive missile strikes were now part of its planned response to an attack from China.
In the first phase of its annual Han Kuang exercise in April, Taiwan's military conducted a computer simulation of an engagement with China in which missiles were fired at military targets on the mainland.
A US delegation, including the retired commander of US forces in the Pacific, Admiral Dennis Blair, observed the exercise, Taiwanese defense analysts said.
In the aftermath of the exercise, the Bush administration urged Taipei to avoid destabilizing the Taiwan Strait and concentrate on defensive weapons.
"We think that offensive capabilities on either side of the Taiwan Strait are destabilizing and therefore not in the interests of peace and stability," said Dennis Wilder, senior director of East Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.
The Ministry of National Defense denied that the missiles still under development were offensive weapons. It said that if a decision was made to deploy them, they would only be used if the island was attacked.
"Our country would not make provocations on its own," the ministry said in a statement. "Only if we suffered an enemy attack would we actually strike back."
Yang of the Council of Advanced Policy Studies said Taiwan's decision to develop longer-range missiles was part of a strategic reassessment of the most effective method to counter the firepower of China's improving land, air and sea forces.
The US and other powers were unwilling to supply these kinds of weapons to Taiwan, so Taiwan had no choice but to develop its own, Yang said.
Research and development teams from Taiwan's military had continued to improve the range, payload and guidance systems of domestically designed anti-ship cruise missiles to the point where they could be used against coastal military targets in China.
Yang also said some of the reports about the capabilities of these new cruise missiles could be exaggerated.
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