Taiwan Redeploys Air Defense Systems To Counter China Threat—Videos

Trucks carrying Taiwan's homegrown missile launchers rolled through a southern township over the weekend as the island's armed forces repositioned their air defenses to better meet China's growing military threat.

Footage supplied to Newsweek by local plane-spotting group Taiwan ADIZ showed the convoy of Tien Kung 3, or Sky Bow 3, systems moving through the seaside town of Hengchun in southern Pingtung County on Saturday.

Taipei's latest Sky Bow 3 surface-to-air missile systems are a key component in the island's air defenses, typically handled by the army. Their presence was a reminder to local residents of the Chinese military's increasingly frequent activity in nearby skies.

Beijing claims the democratically ruled island as part of Chinese territory, although the Communist Party has never governed there. It is Chinese government policy not to rule out the use of force to achieve its ultimately goal of political control over Taiwan.

The capability gap between the world's second and 21st-largest economies is substantial and widening. Taiwan is making efforts to shore up its defenses and this year plans to spend 2.5 percent of its GDP on defense, up from 2 percent last year, excluding any special budgets.

From January 1, young conscripts drafted into compulsory military service will train for up to 12 months, more than double the previous four-month regimen, in a move Taipei says will better prepare its citizens for a crisis and also show its determination to defend itself against an invasion.

The Sky Bow 3 platforms transferred to Hengchun from northern Taiwan were a response to the Chinese People's Liberation Army's continued activity near the island's southern airspace, said Shu Hsiao-huang, an associate research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, Taiwan's top military think tank.

In recent years, China has been sending an increasing number and variety of military aircraft into Taiwan's claimed air defense identification zone to test its responses and to keep the Taiwanese air force and missile defenses on high alert.

Taiwan's Defense Ministry plans to upgrade a dozen missile sites that have been hosting older missile systems and replace them with Sky Bow 3 systems by the end of 2026.

A spokesperson reached by Newsweek said the ministry does not comment on the deployment of forces.

China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a written request for comment.

The Sky Bow series of air defense missiles was developed by the state-owned National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology. The Sky Bow III was first introduced to the public in 2007 and went into mass production in 2014.

The missile was designed to engage threats including "aircraft, cruise missiles, anti-radiation missiles, and short-range tactical missiles," NCSIST said on its website.

The made-in-Taiwan defense system is used alongside the Taiwan army's U.S.-made Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries to provide the island with more low-altitude coverage.

The Sky Bow 3 missile, however, costs one-sixth the price of its American missile interceptor counterpart, Shu, the INDSR researcher, told Newsweek.

It also has a greater range than the Patriot and, with a maximum speed of Mach 7, travels nearly twice as fast as the most advanced iteration of the U.S. missile platform.

Compared to its predecessors, the Sky Bow 3 platform's mobility also makes it harder to hit, while its detection capabilities enable it to pick out targets with a radar cross section of one-tenth of a square foot.

In addition, the system's computer-controlled phased array antenna is said to be able to accurately predict and adjust to changes in trajectory of any conventional ballistic missile China can throw at it.

However, Shu pointed out the Sky Bow 3 remains untested against cutting-edge hypersonic weapons, an area where China outclasses both its American rival and its ally Russia. The U.S. military has yet to deploy a hypersonic weapon of its own.

Weapons like the PLA's Dongfeng-17 missiles are harder to lock on to, not only due to their incredible speed, but also because the hypersonic glide vehicles that deliver their payload can fly under the radar horizons of ship and ground-based scanners and constantly maneuver.