China is adding at least 75 ballistic missiles a year to its arsenal and is likely to have fielded 600 against Taiwan by 2005, the Pentagon's Taiwan desk officer said in remarks made public on Thursday.
"Taiwan faces the most daunting conventional ballistic missile threat in the world," said Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Mark Stokes, the Pentagon official.
Stokes made his remarks to a privately organized, closed-door US-Taiwan defense industry conference held in San Antonio, Texas, from Feb. 12 to Feb. 14. A copy of his presentation was made available to reporters by the Pentagon.
At the conference, Bush administration officials urged Taipei to move forward quickly with antimissile systems, notably Lockheed Martin's Patriot PAC-3, to counter the Chinese buildup in the short- and mid-term.
"We urge Taiwan to take steps needed to acquire defensive weapons and systems sufficient to address the ever increasing threat posed by [China]," Randall Schriver, the deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told the conference.
Richard Lawless, who is the Pentagon's top policymaker on the region, said China was working on multiple ways to "coerce" Taiwan and that surprise and speed could render any US military assistance ineffective.
"Taiwan cannot rely on the United States to defend the island against [Chinese] conventional ballistic and land attack cruise missiles, particularly in the opening phases of a conflict," he said.
In addition to its ballistic-missile buildup, Beijing is expected to deploy first-generation cruise missiles designed to attack land targets before 2005, Stokes said.
Beside the Patriot PAC-3 system, another short- to mid-term option for Taipei could be the Arrow missile interceptor, developed jointly by Israel and the US and declared operational in October 2000, Stokes said.
Other options included upgrading the Tien-Jung 2A interceptors, reported to have been tested in 1998, and obtaining surface-launched US-built AMRAAM missiles, he said.
The US is weighing a Taiwanese request for immediate delivery of Raytheon-built AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air missiles purchased in 2000. The missiles were to be stored in the US until or unless China fielded a similar air-to-air system, something it may have since done, US officials have said.
Stokes said Taipei could receive early warning information from space-based sensors, by implication, from US systems.
Other overhead surveillance options included "high altitude/long endurance unmanned aerial vehicles," he said.
But he said missile defense does not "connote an alliance with the United States; nor does it constitute a global/regional organization in which Taiwan can `join.'"
The cost of a "point" defense, which would protect selected critical facilities and areas, need not be "exorbitant," he added.
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