Taiwan eyeing long-range cruise missiles from US

TAIPEI • Taiwan is seeking to acquire long-range, air-launched cruise missiles from the US, a Taipei defence official has said, as the island bolsters its forces in the face of increasing pressure from China.

While Taiwan is developing its own long-range missiles, to give it an ability to strike back deep into China in the event of war, it has also looked to the United States to help provide it more advanced weaponry. China regards Taiwan as a breakaway province to be reunified, by force if necessary.

When asked in Parliament yesterday which weapons systems Taiwan wants to buy, but which the US has not yet approved, Mr Lee Shih-chiang, head of Taiwan's defence ministry's strategic planning department, named Lockheed Martin Corp's AGM-158.

"We are still in the process of seeking it" from the US, Mr Lee said. "Communication channels are very smooth and normal," he added, but did not elaborate.

The AGM-158 JASSM - which stands for Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile - can have a range of almost 1,000km, depending on the model, and be fixed to aircraft including F-16s, which Taiwan operates.

Lockheed Martin says the missile is designed to destroy high-value, well-defended, fixed and relocatable targets, and can be launched far away to keep the launch aircraft well away from enemy air defence systems.

China has stepped up military activity near Taiwan. Taiwan's armed forces, dwarfed by China's, are in the midst of a modernisation programme to offer a more effective deterrent, including the ability to hit back at bases far from China's coast in the event of a conflict.

Taiwan's armed forces have traditionally concentrated on defending the island from a Chinese attack.

But Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen has stressed the importance of developing an "asymmetrical" deterrent, using mobile equipment that is hard to find and destroy, and capable of hitting targets far away from Taiwan.

The US, Taiwan's main foreign arms supplier, has been eager to create a military counterbalance to Chinese forces, building on an effort known within the Pentagon as "Fortress Taiwan".

REUTERS