The Ministry of National Defense is to propose a special budget to replace the military’s currently fielded command and control system, bolster defensive resilience and acquire more attack drones, a senior defense official said yesterday.
The budget would be presented to the legislature in August, the source said on condition of anonymity.
Taiwan’s decade-old Syun An (迅安, “Swift Security”) command and control system is a derivative of Lockheed Martin’s Link-16 developed under Washington’s auspices, they said.
Photo: CNA
The Syun An system is difficult to operate, increasingly obsolete and has unresolved problems related to integrating disparate tactical data across the three branches of the military, they said.
The US has agreed to assist Taiwan in developing a new command and control system, they said.
The new system would be based on the US-made Link-22 to offer superior over-the-horizon capabilities, resistance to jamming and sufficient interoperability for achieving a common operational picture with NATO forces, they said.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
The ministry has not concluded talks with the US regarding the procurement of asymmetric capabilities and systems related to the resilient defense concept, the official said.
This means that previous media reports alleging the ministry had allocated NT$300 billion to NT$500 billion (US$10.1 billion to US$16.9 billion) to these programs were not correct, they said.
The Sea-Air Combat Power Improvement Plan is drawing to a close, with production of Wan Chien missiles, Hsiung Sheng missiles and various uncrewed vehicles either completed or nearing completion, they said.
This means that the ministry would fund the production of additional batches of Hsiung Feng III (“Brave Wind III”) anti-ship missiles and new weapons developed by the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology’s Chiang Kung Program with its regular annual budget, they said.
The Chiang Kung Program has produced two new weapons, one known as the Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV), and another weapon temporarily dubbed the Chiang Kung IIA/B, its codename under the project.
The Tien Kung IV is an anti-ballistic missile with a maximum altitude of 70km, more than any variant of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles.
The Chiang Kung IIA is an anti-ballistic missile capable of reaching an altitude of 100km, equivalent to the US-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile, and Chiang Kung IIB, a surface-to-surface weapon with an effective range of 1,000km.
Separately, the nation’s prototype attack submarine Hai Kun (海鯤, “Narwhal”) yesterday initiated the final phase of the harbor acceptance test, putting the boat on the verge of completing a developmental milestone.
The submarine requested and obtained permission to sail in a loop three times in the seas off the Port of Kaohsiung, records obtained by the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) showed.
The Hai Kun was photographed by members of the public sailing in the waters with the bow number visible.
When asked, a source said on condition of anonymity that the submarine was testing its propulsion system and would sail further out to sea if yesterday’s trial proved successful.
The Hai Kun’s harbor acceptance test had initially been scheduled for April, but was subsequently delayed.
Navy Chief of Staff Vice Admiral Chiu Chun-jung (邱俊榮) last month said that the target of delivering the Hai Kun by November remained unchanged.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
RSS