The Ministry of National Defense is to go ahead with its plan to test-fire its Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles at a US base in New Mexico in July next year.
The plan calls for the ministry to send units from the Air Defense Missile Command to the US for operating, launching, flight surveillance, target interception and other tests of the PAC-3 system.
Under the current planning, about 40 military personnel from the Air Defense Missile Command will go to the US White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico for training and to carry out the tests, a high-level defense ministry official said.
They will be joined by top deputies and representatives from General Staff Headquarters to supervise and monitor the Patriot missiles launch operation and test-fire results, according to the official, who declined to be named.
Japan was the first of the US’ allied nations in the western Pacific to conduct PAC-3 flight tests at a US military base, and Taiwan is to be the second next year.
The Japan Air Self-Defense Force had carried out its testing at White Sands, with the successful launch of two PAC-3 missiles and the interception of their targets, on Sept. 17, 2008.
Arrangements with Washington had been underway for some years for the military’s PAC-3 missile test-fire plan at a US base.
At first, the government spoke to Washington about test-firing the missiles at a Taiwanese military base, but the US side turned down the request, after declining a similar request by Japan, the official said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said Washington would charge Taiwan US$4 million for the test when he questioned then-minister of defense Yen Ming (嚴明) regarding the negotiation progress at a legislative session in December last year.
At that time, Yen said the ministry decided not to spend the money and put the plan on the backburner due to constraints in the defense budget.
“The PAC-3 currently is a vital air defense and anti-missile attack system relied upon by the US and several of its allies,” the ministry official said. “It is a top-priority target for espionage and data-collection by Chinese military and intelligence agencies.”
“If the test-firing takes place in Taiwan, then China could gather the PAC-3 missile’s electronic signal and other flight data. That would undermine Taiwan’s national security, and could also endanger the air defense systems of Japan and the US,” he said.
PAC-3 missiles were included in Taiwan’s October 2008 and January 2010 arms procurement notifications to the US Congress — 330 in the former and 114 in the latter notification, for a total cost of about US$5.9 billion.
The latest procurement came in January 2012, when Taiwan placed a US$921 million order for PAC-3 missiles as the military sought to bolster the nation’s air defense systems.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS