The effectiveness of Taiwan’s fast-attack missile boats to counter the Chinese military will largely depend on the vessels’ ability to acquire targeting information, which might not be guaranteed in a full-scale war scenario, a defense expert said recently.
Unable to compete with the People’s Liberation Army Navy on a tonne-for-tonne basis, the Taiwanese Navy has in recent years embarked on an “asymmetrical” program, developing and fielding fast-attack boats equipped with a variety of surface-to-surface and anti-ship missiles.
Since 2010, three squadrons, or a total of 31 170-tonne Kuang Hua VI fast-attack missile boats, have entered service in the navy. Each boat is equipped with four Hsiung Feng II (HF-2) anti-ship missiles, which have a range of approximately 150km.
Since last year, the military has also begun modifications on some of its 500-tonne Ching Chiang-class patrol boats to outfit them with four Hsiung Feng III (HF-3) ramjet-powered supersonic anti-ship missile launchers. Five Cheng Kung-class frigates have also been outfitted with HF-3s as part of a NT$12 billion (US$406 million) program to arm the navy with 120 HF-3s, a 300km-range missile that since last year has been known as Taiwan’s “carrier killer.”
A new 450-tonne radar-evading fast attack corvette currently under development under a program known as “Hsun Hai,” or “Swift Sea,” is expected to be outfitted with eight HF-2 and HF-3 launchers.
Late last month, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) told a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee that Hsun Hai vessels equipped with 650km-range HF-2Es would give Taiwan the ability to launch retaliatory attacks on Chinese military targets well beyond coastal areas.
The Hsiung Feng missile is produced by the Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology. Taiwan’s development of cruise missile technology has proceeded despite opposition from the US, especially over the HF-2E, which Washington considers an offensive weapon.
Despite the missile boats being hailed as an effective way to counter China, some defense experts have said that the vessels’ reliance on off-board sensors for over-the-horizon (OTH) targeting to fully exploit the reach of their missiles could be their Achilles’ heel.
Those off-board sensors include AN-TPS-59 radars, which have a range of 740km and a variety of phased-array radars installed near missile bases.
AN-TPS-59 and 445km-range AN/TPS-75V radars are installed on Dongyin Island (東引島) of the Matsu island chain, just 45km off the coast of China’s Fujian Province. Defense News reported in 2010 that the radars bring Fuzhou Air Base and Longtian Air Base within their coverage, as well as the Nanping Missile Base and Xianyou Missile Base, where Dong Feng-15 ballistic missiles are deployed. The recently completed Shuimen Air Base is also within range.
Dongyin, as well as other shore-based radar sites on Taiwan’s offshore islands and Taiwan proper, would likely be among the primary targets of an attack by China.
“The true measure of effectiveness of the asymmetrical capabilities [of the fast-attack missile boats] rests with the robustness and survivability of the principally shore-based long-range radar network and the tactical datalink system,” a US-based defense expert told the Taipei Times recently, adding that it was far from certain whether such systems would remain viable in a full-scale war scenario.
Unlike China, the Taiwanese military does not have a -constellation of surveillance and tracking satellites, such as the Beidou navigation system, to provide homing coordinates for its cruise missiles. As such, by disabling the long-range radars or datalink systems used by the Taiwanese Navy to provide targeting information to the vessels, China could make it impossible for Taiwanese attack boats to effectively use their cruise missiles for OTH attacks on targets in China or at sea, thus negating the asymmetrical advantage.
Although unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can provide an alternative guidance and datalink platform, Taiwan is not known to have developed survivable mobile command-and-control centers that could receive information from UAV sensors or from a ground station and then assign target data to missile-carrying platforms at sea, the source said.
Another source told the Times yesterday that mobile radar systems, which the Taiwanese military possesses, would have better chances of evading or surviving at attack.
Taiwan has also reportedly shown interest in acquiring low-probability-of-intercept radars (LPIR), which are designed to be difficult to detect while tracking a target, the source said.
GOOD INFLUENCE: Kwan said his mother tutored him at home for a few years, saying that she had to protect his ‘creativity’ as his writing had suffered Director and coproducer of the Oscar-winning absurdist comedy-drama Everything Everywhere All at Once Daniel Kwan (關家永) on Sunday dedicated the movie to his Taiwanese mother, who he said supported his creativity growing up. “She is someone who sacrificed a lot for her kids,” Kwan, 35, said backstage at the Oscars. The movie, released early last year, received a commanding 11 nominations at the Academy Awards, and won seven, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing. Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, with whom he also directed the 2016 fantasy film Swiss Army
A domestically developed “suicide drone,” also known as a loitering munition, would be tested and evaluated in July, and could enter mass production next year, Taiwan’s weapons developer said on Wednesday. The yet-to-be-named drone was among nine drone models unveiled by the National Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) on Tuesday. The drone has been dubbed the “Taiwanese switchblade” by Chinese-language media, due to its similarity to the US-made AeroVironment Switchblade 300, which has been used by Ukraine in counterattacks during Russia’s invasion. It has a range of more than 10km, a flight time of more than 15 minutes, and an electro-optical
Three people arrested earlier this year for growing cannabis plants with an estimated street value of nearly NT$20 million (US$652,507) in Chiayi County earlier this year could be sentenced to life in prison for breaching the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例), Taichung police said yesterday. A couple, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and suspect surnamed Hsu (徐) were found cultivating 91 cannabis plants on a farm in the county after law enforcement agents raided the site in the middle of January when they were about to harvest the field, Taichung police told a news conference. Taichung police said they were tipped off last year
HYGIENE KEY: The CDC reported two cases of enterovirus 71, which can cause serious complications, and as there have been no recent outbreaks, children are not immune Two cases of enterovirus 71 (EV71) were reported last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that it was a warning sign, as the virus has not been detected for more than a year. Parents are advised to remind their children to practice good hand hygiene, it said. Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉), director of the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Center, said that 165,230 people visited a hospital for diarrhea last week, which is a high number. Most of the diarrhea case clusters were caused by norovirus infection, but there were also enterovirus cases, and weekly caseloads are slowly increasing, Guo said. Most of
RSS