Tue, Jun 12, 2012 - Page 3 News List

Fast-attack boat efficacy questioned

ACHILLES’ HEEL:By disabling radar and data links needed to acquire target information, China could blind Taiwan’s fast-attack missile boats and render them practically useless

By J. Michael Cole  /  Staff reporter

Unlike China, the Taiwanese military does not have a -constellation of surveillance and tracking satellites, such as the Beidou navigation system, to provide homing coordinates for its cruise missiles. As such, by disabling the long-range radars or datalink systems used by the Taiwanese Navy to provide targeting information to the vessels, China could make it impossible for Taiwanese attack boats to effectively use their cruise missiles for OTH attacks on targets in China or at sea, thus negating the asymmetrical advantage.

Although unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can provide an alternative guidance and datalink platform, Taiwan is not known to have developed survivable mobile command-and-control centers that could receive information from UAV sensors or from a ground station and then assign target data to missile-carrying platforms at sea, the source said.

Another source told the Times yesterday that mobile radar systems, which the Taiwanese military possesses, would have better chances of evading or surviving at attack.

Taiwan has also reportedly shown interest in acquiring low-probability-of-intercept radars (LPIR), which are designed to be difficult to detect while tracking a target, the source said.

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