The Ministry of National Defense yesterday said that it is planing a phased upgrade to its aging RIM-72 and MIM-72 surface-to-air missiles by sending them to the US for service life extension packages.
The RIM-72 Sea Chaparral is an anti-aircraft missile carried by surface vessels, while the MIM-72 Chaparral is its ground-based counterpart. Both US-made weapons had a service life that expired in 2014.
The first batch of upgraded missiles could be delivered as soon as next year, should the plan be approved, the ministry said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Shen Chih-hwei (沈智慧) said that the military’s NT$754.24 million (US$24.27 million) plan to upgrade the missiles was a “waste of taxpayer money on old stuff.”
The ministry should prioritize buying indigenous weapons, such as the Hai Kung III and Hai Chien Lin missiles of the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, not upgrading legacy systems that are foreign-made, Shen said.
The ministry said the Hai Chien Lin missile is not ready for initial operational evaluation, while the RIM-72 is a short-range weapon to defend a naval fleet in an air attack.
Navy ships must be armed with a mix of long-range and short-range weapons to create overlapping fields of fire and establish a layered defense, it said.
Those roles are filled by the Standard Missile-2, effective to 148km, and the RIM-72, effective to 8km, it said.
The combination of MIM-72 and AIM-92 Stinger missiles plays a similar role in defending naval bases and anchored ships, it said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift