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Yesterday, October 11, via Twitter, the Taiwan Defense Force (MND) announced that a Y-8 fighter aircraft from mainland China had just violated the “Taiwan air defense identification area”. In response, the NMD said it had sent fighter jets to monitor the enemy and deployed a closely guarded anti-aircraft missile system.
Taiwan has bought MIM-23 missiles from the United States |
For a few months, Taiwan has started using surface-to-air missiles to monitor mainland fighters entering territorial airspace. This can be seen as an important step in how Taipei manages when it increases its combat readiness, particularly when it can fire missiles into the air.
In fact, Taiwan has been constantly improving its air defense capabilities and deploying more air-to-air missile systems. Several websites recently posted images of Taiwan deploying the MIM-23 Hawk short-range air-to-air missile systems. This is a very versatile line of rockets that Taiwan has bought from the US for quite some time.
In late August, Taiwanese media reported that the island’s Air Defense Force was considering purchasing more Phalanx melee artillery systems to defend against missiles, drones.
The Thien Cung missile is developed with both versions for warships. |
In addition, Taipei also purchased United States Patriot missile systems with a range of up to hundreds of kilometers many years ago, and developed the Sky Bow long-range air defense missile system. In particular, the Sky Bow (Celestial Palace) was developed by Taipei since the early 1980s. Since then, the Thien Cung system has been regularly updated by Taipei and now the third generation Thien Cung has a range of approximately 200 km. That is, it can attack Chinese fighters from the mainland, because the Taiwan Strait is only about 160 km wide.
The third-generation Thien Cung missile is also highly regarded when it reaches Mach 7 speed (7 times faster than the speed of sound). In addition, Thien Cung is also developing a ballistic missile defense version.
In particular, starting in 2019, Taiwan began the process of equipping Thien Cung 3 missiles for warships to add more air defense capabilities both at a distance and at sea. The warship version of the Thien Cung missile integrated into the vertical launch tube system is quite popular.
The image is believed to be the area under Taiwan’s air-to-air missile garrison, including the Patriot. |
Meanwhile, the Patriot missile system that Taiwan owns is considered quite “old”. Amid rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait recently, Reuters in early July reported that Washington had approved a contract to upgrade the $ 620 million Patriot missile for Taipei. Through this contract, Taiwan Patriot systems will be upgraded to ensure effective combat capabilities for a further 30 years.
Therefore, Taiwan can rely on its air defense system before activities across the strait.
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