From the China Post: Missiles against the mainland?

     Last Friday, both the New York Times and the International Herald Tribute reported that Taiwan, led by a pro-independence government, was deploying long-range missiles against the mainland. It was a follow-up to an AP dispatch from Taipei two weeks earlier. According to these reports, Taiwan has in recent months tested a land-attack cruise missile with a range of 1,000 kilometers, or 621 miles, that could carry a 400-kilogram warhead to targets as distant as Shanghai.

     Offensive missile strikes are now part of Taiwan's planned response to an attack from the mainland. Taiwan's military currently has no long-range missiles that could attack distant targets on the mainland. Senior military officials and lawmakers in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party have confirmed that the land-attack cruise missiles are under development.

     You know I have long wondered if the Taiwanese may have secretly developed a nuclear deterrent force?  The Reasons for doing so are readily apparent, and with this sort of delivery system would provide a strategic check to the PRC's continual threats of invasion for what ever it deems to be politically unacceptable.  Now there are a lot of reasons to believe that they do not posess nuclear weapons, but there also things that point to the possibility as well.  In the against column are the cost to develop such weapons and the specialized infastructure needed to support them, which appears to be lacking on Taiwan.  On the rather heavier for column are the Taiwanese involvement in the development of the block 60 F-16C, which has unrefueled range enough to one way a bomb to Beijing, and you don't do that to drop one 2,000lb GBU.  The development of alternative delivery systems such as cruise missiles and finally the close military relationship between Taiwan, Israel, and South Africa, one de-facto nuclear state and one former nuclear state, and memebers all of the international parriah club.  Makes you wonder doesn't it?  And the Taiwanesse hope that it will make Beijing think too.  If ten or twenty major cities in the PRC get vaporized for military action against the ROC the ability of the Chinese to continue military operations and conduct relief and recovery operations would be strecthed well beyond the breaking point.  So if they're smart the will give that posibility some serious thought.

Posted by: raging tachikoma at 05:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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