A senior US military officer is to privately brief a US congressional subcommittee on how a new weapons system could be used in the Taiwan Strait.
The system involves heavily armed surveillance drones that would fly from aircraft carriers to counter Chinese anti-ship missiles.
“If these unmanned platforms can keep the US Navy carrier battle groups relevant in the face of new Chinese threats, that will benefit Taiwan tremendously,” said Richard Fisher, senior fellow on Asian military affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
The US House of Representatives’ Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee called a hearing on the drones — officially known as Unmanned Carrier Launched Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) — earlier this month.
Subcommittee Chairman Randy Forbes said the UCLASS program was “integral to ensuring our carrier fleet can continue to project power throughout the globe.”
Forbes asked one of the witnesses, Pentagon-based Brigadier General Joseph Guastella, if the UCLASS drones could operate over areas guarded by Chinese warships.
Guastella answered that the capabilities of Chinese surface action groups had been considered and that he would be “happy to come by and show you what that exactly entails, what that threat is, where that threat is located.”
Forbes responded: “And when you do, could you also talk about the Taiwan Strait and how it would operate there?”
“Yes sir, I would be happy to do that,” Guastella said.
No details on how the UCLASS drones would deal with Chinese warships were given in the open hearing and are presumably classified.
However, it is known that prototype UCLASS drones have been landed on aircraft carriers and that the plan is to use them in the future for intelligence gathering, surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting and strike capability.
Four major US companies are now competing for the UCLASS development and production contract.
One proposal is for the drone to carry a 1,000-pound (453.6kg) Laser Joint Attack Munition and be operational by about 2020.
“The US is in an arms race,” Fisher told the Taipei Times.
He said that last year, the US Navy had to revise UCLASS requirements, decreasing stealth capabilities in exchange for larger size and range.
“The UCLASS technology demonstration vehicle, the Northrop-Grumman X-47B, has an estimated combat radius of about 1,900km, which may have been too close to the estimated 1,700km range of the PLA’s [China’s People’s Liberation Army] DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile,” Fisher said.
The UCLASS that should be entering service in about six years will be larger and have a longer range.
“These platforms could eventually be armed with high-power lasers to perform missile defense and anti-satellite missions,” Fisher said.
However, he stressed that reliance on unmanned platforms carries clear risks.
They are vulnerable to enemy electronic interference and “insider” threats.
Fisher said that absent appropriate countermeasures, one traitor with deep inside knowledge on a flash drive could in seconds turn the US’ unmanned air force into the PLA’s unmanned air force.
He said the next step for the US may be to develop UCLASS size platforms that are also capable of sustained high supersonic speeds to better counter long-range PLA missiles and eventual PLA long-range drones.
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
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
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