- (Reuters) -- China is adding at least 75 ballistic missiles
a year to its arsenal and is likely to have fielded 600 against Taiwan
by 2005, the Pentagon's Taiwan desk officer said in remarks made public
on Thursday.
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- "Taiwan faces the most daunting conventional ballistic
missile threat in the world," said Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Mark
Stokes, the Pentagon official.
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- Stokes made his remarks to a privately organized, closed-door
US-Taiwan defense industry conference held in San Antonio, Texas, from
Feb. 12 to Feb. 14. A copy of his presentation was made available to reporters
by the Pentagon.
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- At the conference, Bush administration officials urged
Taipei to move forward quickly with antimissile systems, notably Lockheed
Martin's Patriot PAC-3, to counter the Chinese buildup in the short- and
mid-term.
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- "We urge Taiwan to take steps needed to acquire
defensive weapons and systems sufficient to address the ever increasing
threat posed by [China]," Randall Schriver, the deputy assistant secretary
of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told the conference.
-
- Richard Lawless, who is the Pentagon's top policymaker
on the region, said China was working on multiple ways to "coerce"
Taiwan and that surprise and speed could render any US military assistance
ineffective.
-
- "Taiwan cannot rely on the United States to defend
the island against [Chinese] conventional ballistic and land attack cruise
missiles, particularly in the opening phases of a conflict," he said.
-
- In addition to its ballistic-missile buildup, Beijing
is expected to deploy first-generation cruise missiles designed to attack
land targets before 2005, Stokes said.
-
- Beside the Patriot PAC-3 system, another short- to mid-term
option for Taipei could be the Arrow missile interceptor, developed jointly
by Israel and the US and declared operational in October 2000, Stokes said.
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- Other options included upgrading the Tien-Jung 2A interceptors,
reported to have been tested in 1998, and obtaining surface-launched US-built
AMRAAM missiles, he said.
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- The US is weighing a Taiwanese request for immediate
delivery of Raytheon-built AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air missiles
purchased in 2000. The missiles were to be stored in the US until or unless
China fielded a similar air-to-air system, something it may have since
done, US officials have said.
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- Stokes said Taipei could receive early warning information
from space-based sensors, by implication, from US systems.
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- Other overhead surveillance options included "high
altitude/long endurance unmanned aerial vehicles," he said.
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- But he said missile defense does not "connote an
alliance with the United States; nor does it constitute a global/regional
organization in which Taiwan can `join.'"
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- The cost of a "point" defense, which would
protect selected critical facilities and areas, need not be "exorbitant,"
he added.
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- http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2003/02/22/195464
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