The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday confirmed that a batch of four nose-cone fuses for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that were accidentally shipped to Taiwan by the US in 2006 had been returned to the US.
The missile parts were shipped to Taiwan in error after the Army had ordered helicopter batteries.
"The Pentagon initially asked us to handle the matter, but we could not. When it became apparent that the parts were prohibited military items that should not have left the [US] they stepped in to manage their return," said Vice Admiral Wu Wei-rong (吳偉榮), director-general for the MND's Armaments Bureau.
"We have returned the package, invoiced the Pentagon for compensation and have placed a new order for the correct items," Wu told the legislature's Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee's meeting yesterday morning.
The ministry said that it had ordered four replacement battery packs for use with the nation's fleet of UH-1H helicopters from the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency, but the error was only discovered last week when staff tried to unpack what they thought were the battery packs.
The military made the comments after the Pentagon made public details about the incident on Tuesday.
The Pentagon said that the items had since been returned to US control, although US officials said many questions remain.
They said it was not clear, for instance, why it took Taiwan nearly two years to realize the nose-cone mechanisms were not helicopter batteries, adding the answer to that had to await the conclusion of investigations now being launched.
US defense officials said that initial indications were that the Taiwanese military did not tamper with the equipment or gain information that could contribute to the development of missile technology with potential nuclear ramifications.
But the US officials stressed that they did not have much information, and that further investigations, which were ordered immediately, would have to be conducted before most questions arising from the Pentagon's gaffe could be answered.
Some experts said that even two years of access to the fuse mechanisms would not have been sufficient for Taiwan's military to derive any benefit from the mistake.
"While the fuse is part of the nuclear warhead for the US Minuteman ICBM, it appears very unlikely that such a simple fuse could in any way inform a Taiwanese missile program," Richard Fisher, an expert on Taiwanese military issues, told the Taipei Times.
"Taiwan has been producing artillery rockets for decades and likely has long had the ability to make similar fuses for sensing altitude to trigger an explosion," he said.
Pentagon officials said that the mistake was only discovered last Thursday. On Friday, on the eve of Taiwan's presidential election, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and US President George W. Bush were notified. Immediate actions were taken to retrieve the errant boxes and return them to US control, the Pentagon officials said.
US officials briefing the media on the foul-up said that the items involved were four nose cone assemblies and their electrical components for Minuteman ICBMs.
The equipment is used to trigger nuclear warheads as the missiles approach their targets, information US officials gave reporters during a Pentagon media conference showed.
The nose cone mechanisms were stored at a warehouse in Utah and were mistakenly shipped to Taiwan in the fall of 2006 instead of the helicopter batteries Taiwan had ordered.
Once in Taiwan, they were warehoused, and the mistake was not noticed until last week, said senior US military officers who discussed the mistake with the media.
Although it took a year-and-a-half for officials to uncover the mistake, Taiwanese authorities acted "very responsibly," US Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told reporters. "When they realized what they had, they notified the right authorities and started the recovery process."
There is "no indication" that Taiwan gleaned any information from the assemblies that would allow the country to build an ICBM on their own, he said.
"We have no indications from a site inspection of the item that it has in any way been tampered with, but that will be part of the further investigation," said Ryan Henry, the director of operations for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The officials made it clear that the incident was a mistake, rather than a deliberate effort to supply Taiwan with aggressive, nuclear-capable technology capable of striking China.
The US notified China of the mistake when it found out about it, Henry said.
"We have spoken to the Chinese authorities and we will continue to have dialogue with them," Henry said.
"There was a mistake in execution and we notified them as soon as we became aware of it," he said.
Fisher found fault with the Pentagon for informing Beijing about the issue before it made the mistake public.
"For decades China has been shipping nuclear weapon and missile technologies to Pakistan, North Korea and Iran, and does not even acknowledge its dangerous proliferation, much less pick up the phone and tell Washington. Has China ever told us anything about the 1,250 ballistic missile and cruise missile fuses pointed at Taiwan?" Fisher said.
The US officials insisted that the incident was not an effort to change US arms sales or strategic policy toward Taiwan.
"Our security assistance to Taiwan is defensive in character and makes available defensive articles and services as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability," Henry said.
"Our policy on Taiwan arms sales have not changed. This specific incident was an error in process only, and is not indicative of our policies, which remain unchanged," he said.
It is far from clear what happened to the components over the past two years. US defense officials say that will be determined during the investigation.
Meanwhile, Hans Kristensen, an expert on nuclear weapons at the Federation of American Scientists, said the fuses were "very sensitive technology because it is essentially the brain of the re-entry vehicle."
At exactly the right moment, an electrical signal from the fuse activates detonators on chemical explosives surrounding the sphere that contains the plutonium trigger of a thermonuclear weapon.
"That has to be very, very, very precise, because if it's not, then you would have some sort of a squish effect where the plutonium would be misformed by the explosion," Kristensen said.
The chemical explosives ignite the plutonium detonation, releasing "this enormous bombardment of neutrons flying everywhere that bounce off reflectors inside the weapon," he said.
Senior Pentagon officials suggested that the fuses were little different from those used in artillery shells and other weapons.
But Kristensen said these fuses are unique and their nose-cone assemblies were also the product of years of costly development.
"And for any country that develops such technology, it is a hugely important technology," he said.
Because the re-entry vehicle passes through the atmosphere at a "very, very high speed and under enormous stress and turbulence, you have to be able to set the height of burst very accurately if you want to have maximum capability out of your warhead," he said.
"So for a country like China, that is trying to develop more capable systems, that would be very important material to get," he said.
Additional reporting by Jimmy Chuang and AFP
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