Please see below. This is excellent news. Now could someone use their protractor and draw 300KM radius from various points on a map to see what cities are in range. Would Shanghai be good enough, most of the decision makers live in Beijing. I would think Taiwan should have to be able to crush ZhongNanHai before the CCP/PLA would begin to see the serious consequences of attacking Taiwan.
[quote]TAIPEI - Taiwan has developed and successfully test-fired surface-to-surface missiles that could hit coastal or interior Chinese cities, a newspaper reported yesterday.
The missiles, dubbed Hsiung-feng 2A and Hsiung-feng 2E, have ranges of between 150km and 300km, the mass-market Liberty Times said, citing unidentified military sources. The new weapons are similar to cruise missiles, which can be programmed to seek out and hit land targets, the paper said.[/quote]
[quote=“Slartibartfast”]According to geobytes.com/CityDistanceTool.htm Taipei to Shanghai is 678Km, and Beijing is 1721Km. Even Taipei to Xiamen is 346Km.
So I’m not sure what you could hit with it. Would anywhere be in range if you fired it from Jinmen or Mazu?[/quote]
If they really have a range of 300km, and can be fired from a ship, that opens up a whole range of targets. If they are land based, I guess you’d have to put them on the coastal islands to get any use.
300km, especially if launched from one of the straits islands, would be enough to hit worthwhile targets, namely runways and radar stations. What I’m more curious to know is the weight of the warhead and the type of guidance system. How accurate are they?
The original Hsiung Feng II is an antiship missile similar to a US Harpoon. They only have a range of about 80km if launched from land or sea. I imagine that range would double if the missile were launched from the air, but 300km? Then again, it may be a completely new missile. The Hsiung Feng II’s warhead is only about 200kg. That’s alright for hiting frigates, but not worth much for hitting hardened ground targets. A Tomahawk’s warhead is about 500kg and the range is much greater than 300km. It’s also old technology. I don’t see why we haven’t given Taiwan the plans for the earlier models.
Taiwan desperately needs cruise missiles for hitting targets in Fujian. If they can manage to take out radar stations and airstrips, they will severely diminish the PRC’s ability to wage an air war. The reason is that the PRC doesn’t have aerial refueling capabilities. If Taiwan hits those airbases in Fujian, those nice SU-27s will either be grounded or will have to fly from further airbases. That means they will have very little fuel for establishing or maintaining air superiority once they get to Taiwan. The PRC also lacks operational airborne radar platforms (although that will change). If the radar sites in Fujian are taken out, their ability to monitor the battlefield will be badly hurt.
They were chucking mortars across the straits in the 50s. Bound to be able to hit something substantial by now. Xiamen’s full of Taiwanese people, though. Prolly not the best target.
The whole Cold War MAD metaphor was a bunch of malarky. In case anyone has forgotten, the PRC has all the nukes and almost all the missiles. There is practically no way in hell Taiwan will be able to strike a target as far away as Zong Nan Hai with any degree of success.
Also, I may need to point out that the PLA’s missile arsenal is mainly to be used against Taiwan’s air defence network and runways. Should Taiwan retaliate by attacking major mainland cities, the shit is literally guaranteed to hit the fan when PRC citizens start demanding that the island of Taiwan be erased from the map. I think those fools who developed this crackpot scheme are both ignorant of political and military considerations and woefully optimistic. The PRC high command has never shrugged away from high casualties and indeed civilian casualties on the mainland make a potent propaganda tool for their arsenal. Mao at one point stated that he would accept Chinese cities being nuked in exchange for annihilating the “Yankee Imperialists”. Given the limited physical damage but high political value that any RoC attack would likely yield, the Taiwanese would essentially be playing into the hands of the PLA. As some of the other posters mentioned, if Taiwan were to develope a limited counter-offensive ability, their best bet would be used to hit resource debots and staging grounds for any possible invasion along the Fujian coast rather than foolishly aiming for Shanghai.
When we talk about targeting mainland cities, it does not mean office buildings and kindergartens. Take out the power plants closest to Shanghai, and watch the city (and the province) grind to a halt.
I’m sure it won’t matter. If PLA missiles start falling on Taiwan, some will probably stray and the government (those that haven’t run off to Japan or the U.S. by then) will be quick to denounce the attack on the civilians. The same goes for Taiwan, if a Taiwanese missile does manage to hit Shanghai or Hong Kong, the PRC can simply spin it out as an insidious attack by separatists against their peace-loving brothers on the mainland. I’m pretty sure there are plenty of mainland Chinese who actually do remember the attacks by RoC marines, frogmen, and saboteurs in Fujian.
There should be a missile with the “Three Gorges Dam” written all over it. The damage done to China would be greater than anything China could do with its missiles short of a nuke. Then you’d be talking real deterrence.
Deterrance only works against an implaccable foe if you can inflict total damage on any enemy or if you have some degree of military parallel. Taiwan has neither. If the three gorges dam does end up destroyed (an unlikely scenario but possible), the subsequent occupation of Taiwan is simply going to be brutal. The PRC will simly seize the reins of Taiwan’s entire economy and start funneling it toward rebuilding the damage on the mainland. I also wouldn’t put it past the PLA to conduct reprisals against Taiwan’s civilian population. You guys talk big about blowing up the three gorges damn or nuking Shanghai or Hong Kong, but if anything like that ever happened, you can rest assured that your lives in Taiwan will never be the same.
That’s the case even if a reunification was peaceful. So what’s Taiwan got to lose? Economic take-over? China can do that already if it chose too.
Defending Taiwan from invasion isn’t that hard. One of these days I’ll even write up a military analysis about it and why I believe so.
The other thing about deterrence is that the ability to inflict unacceptable loses is an effective deterrence, even against an implacable foe like the PRC.
Since all major powers on the planet are slowly re-aligning with the PRC. The war game is moot. ROC will find very few allies willing to take on the PRC directly.
If warfare is ever to occur, Taiwan will be a proxy war between spheres of influence of larger powers. It would be next Korea or Vietnam, just a stage for other powers to play on.
I agree ac. There was a recent cartoon about this very topic. It was hilarious. It was a picture of a shark fin (China), circling toward the bait (Taiwan) which was being dangled from a boat by fishermen (USA) holding machine guns aimed at the shark.
[quote=“lsieh”]
That picture right there, is what Taiwan is.[/quote]Which is precisely why we need our own deterrent. No more guessing whether the US is going to shoot the damn shark or feed us to it,
