Taiwan plans to build 500 cruise missiles

The ballistic missile strategic balance between Mainland China and Taiwan has just received a new complication: A report from a highly-respected British journal states that the offshore island of 25 million people has already home-produced three prototypes of its own cruise missile capable of striking China`s nearby eastern coast.

Taiwan has ambitious plans for the missile, called the Hsiung Feng 2E , or Brave Wind, Jane`s Defence Weekly reported in its latest issue published Wednesday: It intends to produce at least 50 of them by 2010 and in all, eventually plans to produce and deploy 500 of them.

If these plans come to fruition, relatively small Taiwan could come close to developing a strategic equalizer with giant Mainland China of 1.3 billion people. China has slowly but steadily built up a huge force of around 700 ground-launched ballistic missiles with the apparent strategic goal of eventually threatening Taiwan into compliance and preventing it eventually declaring full, legal independence from the mainland. The Chinese missile build-up also appears aimed at preventing U.S. air and naval forces, especially nuclear-powered aircraft carrier battle groups, from operating in the Taiwan Strait to defend Taiwan. Most of it has been carried out since the Clinton administration deployed nuclear carrier battle groups in the strait in July 1995

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