The first of six sets of short-range automated defense weapons systems, purchased by the army, is to be deployed on Dongyin, an islet in the Matsu archipelago, to strengthen defenses in the area, the Ministry of National Defense said.
The funding for the NT$725 million (US$23.9 million) system would be spread across fiscal 2019 to 2021, with full deployment expected by the end of next year, it said on Saturday last week.
The Navy Command has purchased three sets for NT$200 billion, with the land-based variants expected to be deployed on Wuciou Island in Kinmen County, the ministry said.
The system was tested with live-fire trials at Wuciou and the Joint Forces Training Base in Pingtung County in 2014 and was on display at the 2017 Paris Air Show, it said.
The system is based on the locally produced T-75 20mm autocannon and buyers have the option of selecting the single-barrel XTR-101 or the twin-barrel XTR-102, the ministry said, adding that it can be used on land, or mounted on vehicles or ship prows.
It can be remotely controlled, making it significantly less dangerous to use as operators would be safe behind cover, it said.
The system also features a concentrated firing mechanism, allowing one person to operate of several systems at once to aim a concentrated barrage at priority targets, it said.
While the system does not use new technology, it has low overhead costs and utilizes mature photonic technology, the ministry said.
In other news, an article in the military section of Chinese Web site Sina Online said that while the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) usually names its Type 055 destroyers after cities with historic ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Taipei could not be ruled out as a option.
The article said that as of March 12, the PLAN had approved the name Zun Yi (遵義) for its third Type 055 destroyer, although in parentheses it also said that this was doubtful, as the third ship could be named Taipei, instead.
The Chinese Red Army, the forerunner of the PLA, in 1935 moved into Zunyi in Guizhou Province, one of the few cities that had not turned the Red Army away during the Long March. It was in Zunyi that the CCP had held a meeting that saw Mao Zedong (毛澤東) return to power in the party.
Taiwanese military personnel on Monday said that the Republic of China (ROC) Navy does not have a ship named Taipei.
However, they added that the Coast Guard Administration does.
The military also said that two of the ROC Navy’s Kangding-class destroyers, the Sining and Kunming , have the same names as PLAN Type 052-D missile destroyers.
The PLAN also has a Type 053 naval ship named Kangding , the same as the name of the ROC Navy’s Kangding-class destroyers, the military said.
A ROC Navy Cheng Kung-class frigate, the Zhenghe (鄭和), shares the same name as a PLAN ship, although the Chinese ship is not a combat vessel and is mainly used for training, it said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching