The US had tried to prevent Taiwan from obtaining components needed to domestically produce long-range missiles so that it would have to buy US-made missiles instead, the former head of a top military research unit wrote in a memoir.
Retired rear admiral Kung Chia-cheng (龔家政), who was president of the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology from 2003 to 2007, said it was difficult to obtain key components during the development phase of the Hsiung Feng II and Hsiung Feng III anti-ship missiles.
This was because Taiwan is not a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime, an informal group of 35 member states, including the US and Japan, that seeks to limit the proliferation of missiles and missile technology, Kung said in the memoir published by Academia Sinica last month.
Taiwan at the time proposed buying JP-10 jet fuel from the US, but Washington rejected the plan “because the US knew we were getting close to the final stage of developing our own missiles,” he said.
Kung at the time told lawmakers that Taiwan could produce its own JP-10.
However, Kung said in his memoir that his statement sought to entice the US to allow the sales, as the institute at the time was only able to produce a small amount of the fuel.
Kung attributes Washington’s subsequent approval of fuel sales to his statement.
Taiwan also sought to acquire high-precision, strategic-grade gyroscopes from the US to build the two types of long-range missiles, but the US was unwilling to provide them, he said.
He raised the issue at a high-level Taiwan-US meeting on arms sales, but was told that the US would not sell the gyroscopes because “if Taiwan fails to make [the] missiles, it would be forced to buy US-made Tomahawk and Harpoon cruise missiles.”
Kung said that the institute instead found a Taiwanese who had previously worked at a defense company in the US that designs gyroscopes for use in nuclear-powered submarines.
The institute built the missiles despite limited access to US-made key components, he said.
As Taiwan’s main hub for domestically produced weapons, the institute is responsible for the development, manufacture and sales of defense technology and weapons, as well as running domestic and international cooperation programs focused on arms technology, information exchange and promotion.
A spokesperson for the American Institute in Taiwan said in a statement that “consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States makes available to Taiwan defense articles and services necessary to enable it to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”
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