The Military Police Command plans to buy 445 indigenously designed Kestrel missile launchers to defend the capital against assaults by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), sources said on Monday.
Purchases would be spread over two years from next year and the missile launchers would be issued to military police units garrisoned in the Taipei metropolitan area, especially those guarding the Boai Special District (博愛特區), which is home to several ministries and other government buildings, they said.
The Kestrel missile launcher is a disposable, single-shot, shoulder-launched weapon system that fires either a high-explosive anti-tank warhead to engage vehicles with light to medium armor, or a high-explosive squash head to use against buildings.
Photo: Lo Tien-pin, Taipei Times
Thus far, the version of the weapon developed by the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has only been issued to the marine corps.
The purchase would enable military police to better defend Taipei against decapitation strikes, such as airborne, airmobile or special operations assaults, by the PLA, a defense official said on condition of anonymity.
With the missile launchers, the military police could launch mobile counterattacks in urban combat and retake crucial governmental structures, the official said.
The lightweight weapons could be deployed in high-rises or transported in vehicles, making them difficult to counter in an urban environment, the official added.
To bolster the capital’s defenses, the military has garrisoned an additional marine battalion at the Fuxinggang (復興崗) military base in Taipei and formed the Quick-Reaction Company at the 202nd Military Police Regional Command, the official said.
Asked to comment, the Military Police Command confirmed that it plans to buy the Kestrel missile launchers to defend Taipei.
Anti-armor weapons could engage various hostile vehicles and high-value targets, disrupt tactical formations, sap morale, delay troop movements and shatter the enemy’s will to fight, the command said.
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported
RSS