A top military researcher confirmed yesterday that a locally developed anti-missile system passed crucial tests in September, giving a realistic prospect for mass production of the weapons by the year 2005.
Chao Yao-ming (
"We have made some successful tests with the system. We are making steady progress toward our proscribed objectives. Our ultimate aim is to work out a [missile] system which can intercept and destroy hostile aircraft, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles," Chao said.
"The system is designed specially to counter attacks by the M-9 and M-11 ballistic missiles from China, as well as cruise missiles it is developing," he said.
"The system we are developing is based on existing air defense systems. It focuses on upgrading the anti-missile capabilities of these systems to establish a low-tier air defense network," he added.
"It will be as good as the US' Patriot Pac-3," he said.
CIST, according to Chao, "has the confidence to develop and produce this system almost all on its own without having to rely on other countries' help. We won't meet the problem of `being choked' by other countries as we did during other projects. And our final product will be as good as any countries' in the same category."
Chao made the statements at a regular press conference at the Ministry of National Defense, as part of his answer to inquiries over reports that the locally-developed anti-missile system has seen a major breakthrough and that mass production of missiles is expected to start in 2005.
However, military analysts appear to be cautiously optimistic about the system.
"It is hard to estimate how effective the system can be against China's ballistic missiles. But considering a low-tier anti-missile system involves less technological difficulty than high-altitude ones, the system being developed by CIST might really be as good as CIST claimed it would be," said one analyst, who declined to be identified. "Let's wait and see," he added.
Premier Vincent Siew (
"Over the next few years, the anti-ballistic missile capability of the system is expected to be achieved," Chao said.
He admitted, however, that there are still technical problems threatening the overall effectiveness of the system -- but added that the problems were not insurmountable.
Such problems include the lack of a long-range early warning radar to augment the anti-missile system operation, he said.
"The key to intercepting a ballistic missile or a cruise missile is to be able to `see' the targets. Interception of a low-flying fighter plane or a cruise missile are essentially the same thing," Chao said. "HAWK [mobile-launched, ground-to-air] missiles will be enough for it."
"Although Taiwan does not have early-warning satellites or long-range early warning aircraft, it does not mean we cannot build an effective defense against [China's] missile attacks," he said.
"The anti-missile capability we are developing will depend to a large extent on the target acquire and fire control ability of the weapons system. As long as we can locate incoming targets, our weapons system can work very effectively against them," he said.
He also emphasized that early-warning satellites and long-range early-warning aircraft make a great difference to high-tier missile defenses but do not affect the low-tier air defenses Taiwan is developing.
"We plan to use high-explosive warheads rather than the `hit-to-kill' kinetic energy method to destroy intercepted missiles. Although this method does not usually totally destroy the targets, it is usually enough to prevent people and buildings on the land from being harmed," he said.
A high-explosive warhead detonates in the immediate vicinity of the incoming target, its blast range effective over a wide area.
"If we adopt the `hit-to-kill' method, a target miss of a mere two centimeters could be enough to allow an incoming missile through our defenses," he said.
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