Beijing is continuing to test space-age weapons that could make it increasingly difficult for the US to defend Taiwan in the case of an attack from China.
The DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle, which is believed to be capable of speeds of between 4,000 and 8,000 miles per hour (6,440kph and 12,870kph) on Monday was successfully tested for the sixth time in two years.
US intelligence sources say the highly maneuverable weapons system could carry either nuclear or conventional warheads and could probably defeat current missile defenses.
If Beijing continues to test the DF-ZF at this pace, it could actually be deployed by 2020, said Richard Fisher, senior fellow at the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center.
“A DF-ZF-based strike vehicle could form the basis of a more maneuverable second-generation anti-ship ballistic missile warhead, posing an even greater threat to US Navy ships and carriers that may need to assist Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack,” Fisher said.
Monday’s test of the DF-ZF at the Wuzhai missile test center in Shanxi Province was first reported by US national security expert Bill Gertz in the Washington Free Beacon.
Gertz said that the DF-ZF weapon was launched atop a ballistic missile from which it separated near the edge of the atmosphere before gliding to an impact range several thousand kilometers away in western China.
He said that on this occasion it flew at speeds beyond Mach 5, or about 6,190kph.
“The high rate of testing for the glide vehicle is an indication China has placed a high priority on the weapon program and that it is making rapid progress,” Gertz said.
Fisher told the Taipei Times: “China’s development of new long-range mobile space-launch vehicles and its hypersonic maneuvering warhead development point to a future Chinese intercontinental non-nuclear capability.”
“It puts greater pressure on the US to develop new energy weapons like railguns that could provide a better defense against this kind of strike vehicle,” he said.
Without suitable countermeasures, the DF-ZF could make it unlikely that the US would risk sending a carrier group to defend Taiwan in the case of an invasion by China.
“Obviously, this is a concern,” a senior Pentagon source said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS