A naval enthusiast Web site on Sunday analyzed the US Navy’s operation “Hellscape” and what the plan to launch thousands of drones around Taiwan to deter a Chinese invasion would entail.
The concept was reported by Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin in an article published on Monday last week in which he quoted US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said the strategy would involve deploying thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response.
Paparo told Rogin about the plan on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue defense forum in Singapore.
Photo: US Navy via AP
The Naval News report, “Breaking down the US navy’s ‘Hellscape’ in detail,” said that former US commander of the Indo-Pacific Command Admiral John Aquilino first coined the term in August last year at the Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference and Exhibition in Washington.
“‘Hellscape’ envisions a battlefield filled with tens of thousands of unmanned ships, aircraft and submarines all working in tandem to engage thousands of targets across the vast span of the West Pacific,” the report said.
US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced the Replicator initiative at the same conference, and since then, “the program has been hard at work developing new capabilities,” it said.
Many of those capabilities would have “direct applications to the Hellscape concept,” it said.
“The vision of ‘Hellscape’ is clear in the [US] Department of Defense and dozens of active programs, some under the Replicator initiatives and others independent of it, are pushing towards the bigger picture of an Indo-Pacific full of unmanned systems in a hypothetical war,” it said.
The strategy would feature uncrewed systems in every domain, including “one-way attack drones like the AeroVironment Switchblade 600 or UVison Hero-120,” Naval News reported.
“The US Marine Corps are specifically focused on loitering munitions and one-way attack drones and have issued contracts in 2021 and 2024 for integration and procurement of various unmanned systems,” it said, adding that the US Marine Corps last year “unveiled a concept of Hero-120 loitering munitions installed on a Long-Range Unmanned Surface Vessel.”
“The second role of ‘Hellscape’ could be to gather intelligence and put infrastructure in place to support a GPS and intelligence denied environment,” the report said.
Connected by satellites, high-altitude long endurance uncrewed aerial vehicles and “other aspects of ‘Project Overmatch’ that network, drones would engage large amphibious fleets crossing the Taiwan Strait from multiple vectors, coming from islands, undersea and from drone motherships far outside the first island chain,” it said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
ANNUAL EVENT: Two massive Pokemon balloons are to be set up in Daan Park, with an event zone operating from 10am to 6pm This year’s Taipei Floral Picnic is to be held at Daan Park today and tomorrow, featuring an exclusive Pokemon Go event, a themed food market, a coffee rave picnic area and stage performances, the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism said yesterday. Two massive Pokemon balloons are to be set up in the park as attractions, with an exclusive event zone operating from 10am to 6pm, it said. Participants who complete designated tasks on-site would have a chance to receive limited-edition souvenirs, it added. People could also try the newly launched game Pokemon Pokopia in the trial area, the department said. Three PokeStops are
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
RSS