The government is planning on using a locally developed missile shield rather than buying the US-made Patriot weaponry to defend the central and southern part of the nation against attacks from China, it was reported yesterday.
The low-altitude anti-missile system, called ATBM (anti-tactical ballistic missile) by the researchers of the military-run Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, is scheduled to be put into service in 2005, the Liberty Times said.
This system, rather than the US Patriot III weaponry now being tested, would be installed to defend central and southern Taiwan, the paper said.
"That's why the Patriot weaponry was not on the arms shopping list Taipei presented Washington this year," an unnamed military officer was quoted by the report as saying.
Washington has remained the largest arms supplier to Taiwan despite its switching of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
The paper said the tests of Patriot III suggested it could be reliable, but that it might take a long time to be integrated into the nation's missile shield.
The government has installed three batteries of PAC-II Plus missiles, the improved version of the first Patriot, to defend the densely populated greater Taipei area.
But the hostility in 1996, during which China's People's Liberation Army lobbed ballistic missiles into shipping lanes off Taiwan, prompted the government to seek a more advanced missile shield including the purchase of the Patriot III and the development of its own version.
Changshan's ATBM scored an initial success when a missile hit a targeted drone during a test in September 1999.
Chungshan official Chao Yao-ming had said ATBM, which updated the locally developed Tienkung (Sky Bow) air defense system, was guided by phased array radars like those installed on US AEGIS-class destroyer.
The indigenous weaponry targeted M-9 and M-11 ballistic missiles, which form part of China's arms inventory, as well as a new missile program reportedly similar to the US Tomahawk.
The government earlier had announced the ATBM program as part of a "national missile defense" project, and that Chungshan would play a key role in the project.
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