html Since August, the situation in the Taiwan Strait has been stormy. The People's Liberation Army's training around Taiwan has erased the center line, approached the deterrent pressure, and achieved normalized cruise around the Taiwan Strait. Outer islands close to the mainland are often watched by mainland drones, and even civil drones have thrown "eggs" to join in. This combination of punches has really made the Taiwanese authorities and the Taiwan independence forces on the island frightened and under great pressure.
Almost out of instinctive reaction, Taiwan Army said "you have to add money" in order to buy guns and build cannons, and to boost your courage.
■Faced with the strong pressure from the People's Liberation Army, the Taiwan Army turned into a "paid monk with more money" and demanded an increase in military spending.
As expected, on August 25, the Taiwan authorities passed the total budget for 2023, of which the defense budget reached NT$458.63 billion, or approximately US$19.1 billion, an increase of 13.9% compared with last year.
In addition to the daily operations of the army, the newly added military expenditure has only two main uses.
first is to continue to purchase more equipment from the United States, such as "Haimas" rocket launcher and its ammunition, "harpoon" anti-ship missiles, etc.
second is to increase the development of self-developed equipment, especially the research and development of light frigate and drones to strengthen the so-called " asymmetric combat " capabilities. As the gap in the comparison between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait continues to widen, how much role can the new equipment independently developed by the Taiwan Army play?
"Shock Sea Project" was subsequently weak
In 2014, under the promotion of Chen Yongkang, the then Taiwan "Naval Commander", the so-called "Shipbuilding Plan for the Next 15-20 years" was announced. After many modifications and supplements, it was officially finalized in June 2016 and renamed it as "12 Shipbuilding Plans", covering various types of ships such as amphibious dock transport ships, amphibious assault ships, submarines, submarines, rescue ships, minecraft boats, marine surveying ships, destroyers, frigate , and frigate . Among them, the construction plan of the new frigate was named "Shock Sea Project".
■On April 13, 2021, the Taiwan Navy's amphibious dock transport ship "Yushan" was launched. The ship is one of the "12 shipbuilding plans" development equipment.
Navy has put forward a number of technical requirements for the new frigate, such as the combat mission can be carried out under level 7 wind conditions, safe navigation under level 10 wind conditions, multi-task module switching and high automation capabilities, further compressing the crew, having good stealth capabilities, etc., to replace the Kangding class , Chenggong class and Jiyang class frigate , which have been in service for many years.
■The new generation frigate model at the 2017 Taipei International Aerospace and Defense Industry Exhibition. It is worth noting that the vertical launch system located behind the main gun has a total of 32 units.
According to Taiwanese media reports, the standard displacement of the new frigate is 4,500 tons, with a total length of 135 meters, a side width of 15 meters, a draft of 5 meters, a maximum speed of 28 knots, and a cruising capacity of 4,500 nautical miles/16 knots. In the future, the displacement may be increased to 5,200 tons to 6,200 tons depending on the situation.
In terms of ship-based electronic systems, the ship will use the self-developed ship-based active phased array radar and the "Aegis" combat system developed by Taiwan's " Chinese Academy of Sciences" to effectively improve situational awareness and data processing capabilities.
In terms of ship-based weapons, the ship has three sets of 8-mounted vertical launch devices on the bow deck to launch Sea Bow-3/Sea Sword-2 air defense missiles for air defense operations; the unit is equipped with two quad-mounted inclined launch boxes, equipped with Xiongfeng-2/3 supersonic anti-ship missiles for sea-making operations; in addition, it is equipped with an S-70 anti-submarine helicopter.
Objectively speaking, the design and configuration of the new frigate are indeed highlights, and the number of them is constructed is diverse, ranging from 6 to 8 ships to 22 ships, and there is no conclusion yet.
■ After the modification of the concept map of the new generation of frigate in the Taiwan Navy, the vertical launch device has been reduced to 24 units, and the pattern is arranged in a font shape.After the launch of the "Sea Shock Project" of
, the Taiwan Navy was full of expectations, but with the advancement of the design work, the original plan exposed the problem of the hull being too small and the radar system being too heavy. The "Chinese Academy of Sciences" also encountered a bottleneck in the development of ship-based radar and vertical launch device, which was difficult to make a breakthrough for the time being, resulting in a significant downturn in the project.
In view of this, the Taiwan Navy shelved the "Sea Project" in August 2022 and instead developed a new light frigate with a displacement of 2,000 to 2,500 tons to make up for the combat power gap.
It is reported that the light frigate consists of two configurations: air defense and anti-submarine , and a total of 8 ships are built. In addition, it will also undertake anti-blocking and escort tasks.
■The performance of the 1400-ton patrol ship developed by Taiwan’s "Chinese Academy of Sciences" is in a sense. In a new generation of light frigates in the Taiwan Navy may be the deep-improved model of the ship.
After the new light frigate is put into service, the Navy will mainly be used with Tuojiang and Tajiang class patrol ships, providing command and control and short-range air defense cover for the latter. The detailed parameters and configuration of the new light frigate of
has not been disclosed yet, but according to the concept design model of the 1400-ton "light patrol ship" exhibited by the "Chinese Academy of Sciences" in the previous stage, the light frigate will be equipped with Xiongfeng-2/3 anti-ship missiles, Haijian-2 air defense missiles, anti-aircraft range radars with detection ranges of 50 to 100 nautical miles and related sonar systems.
■Taiwan Navy's Jiyang-class frigate "Lanyang" is already quite outdated and needs a new ship to be replaced.
It is not difficult to see that the Taiwan Navy's light frigate is an emergency transition plan after the "Sea Project" was blocked and cannot truly replace the active main warship. It has small tonnage and weak military equipment. The Taiwan authorities are trying to use this type of frigate to strengthen the so-called "asymmetric combat" capabilities, which can only say that the goal and ability are really asymmetric.
"Tengyun project "staggers and walks
From Iraq War to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the military value of drones has been fully proved and has become the standard equipment for modern high-tech information wars. The Taiwan military has also deeply understood this and has also invested heavily in drone research and development and equipment. At present, the drone equipped by the Taiwan military mainly consists of two models, namely the "Kingqin" small drone and the "Ruiyuan" (also known as "Zhongxiang II") medium drone.
■Taiwan Army's "Cardin" small drone was developed based on the US-made RQ-11 "Raw" drone.
"Cardinal" was improved on the basis of the US-made RQ-11 "Raw" small unmanned reconnaissance aircraft in 2007. In addition to the basic model of "Cardinal", the "Cardinal" also launched the "Cardinal II" model in 2014, which has certain improvements in size, load capacity, monitoring range, maximum flight speed, etc. The biggest improvement is that it can be recycled through parachute . It is reported that the Taiwan Army has equipped a total of 30 Cardinal series drones, while the Taiwan Marine Corps has purchased 45.
■The "Ruiyuan" drone equipped by the Taiwan Army is camouflage painted, please note that its main wing has been disassembled.
"Ruiyuan" drone is one of the sub-models of the "Zhongxiang" series of drones developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the 1990s. The early "Zhongxiang Type I" of the plan ended in failure, and the "Zhongxiang Type III" that was highly anticipated by the Taiwan Defense Department has not made substantial progress so far.
"Ruiyuan" drone is made of composite materials, adopts modular design, has the characteristics of light weight and high strength. The power system is a propeller engine. The on-board equipment is composed of a photography reconnaissance system, a microcomputer and a data communication system, which can perform day and night reconnaissance, surveillance, tracking and positioning of designated targets.
However, the reliability of the "Ruiyuan" drone is poor, and it has frequent failures after service. Five of the 32 aircraft purchased by the Taiwan Army have crashed.This makes the outside world full of doubts about its technical level. In contrast, the petite "Cardinal" series is more stable, thanks to the technical foundation of the American "raven".
■The "Tengyun" generation unmanned prototype at the 2015 Taipei International Aerospace and Defense Industry Exhibition is very similar to the American-made MQ-9 "Death" drone.
In 2009, in order to meet the reconnaissance needs of the Taiwan Air Force for coastal targets in Jiangxi, Guangdong and other places, the Taiwan defense department launched the so-called "Long March Plan" to develop a new generation of long-range large drones.
According to Taiwanese media reports, the Taiwan Air Force initially required the combat performance of the new generation of drones to be comparable to that of the US-made MQ-9 "Death" drone.
"Chinese Academy of Sciences" adopts the "take-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it
Unexpectedly, the Taiwan Air Force immediately increased its investment, requiring the "Tengyun Project" to integrate the advanced functions of the US-made " Global Hawk ". It is too demanding for the "Chinese Academy of Sciences" of Taiwan, which has limited strength, and encounters difficult problems in many key performances, such as remote control and large battery life. Therefore, the "Long March Plan" ended in 2018, and the Taiwan defense department turned to the "Tengyun Project" as a replacement.
■The second-generation unmanned prototype of the "Tengyun" at the 2019 Taipei International Aerospace and Defense Industry Exhibition.
learned the lessons of the "Long March Plan" from being ambitious, and the "Tengyun Project" adopted a more pragmatic route. It is reported that the "Tengyun" second-generation drone includes two configurations:
, one is a reconnaissance type that undertakes battlefield situation awareness, intelligence collection, surveillance and tracking, and the other is to add air-mounted guided ammunition, which is responsible for ground/sea strike missions. The latter can carry 70mm rocket , Tianjian-1 air-to-air missile, "Hellfire" air-to-ground missile and other air-on ammunition.
However, the development process of the second-generation drone of "Tengyun" is also full of hardships, and the embarrassing situations of the prototype crashing or being unable to take off the air have really lost all face.
However, in 2022, the "Tengyun Project" has made relatively smooth progress and achieved phased results. For example, in late June, the "Tengyun" prototype test aircraft took off from the Jiashan base of Taiwan's military and returned after flying around the airspace around Taiwan Island for more than ten hours, which made Taiwan's "Chinese Academy of Sciences" and Taiwan's defense department very excited. It claims that the aircraft has "the ability to monitor the sea and airspace around the island for a long time", which may be related to the digestion of early technical reserves and Western technical assistance.
■The "Tengyun" second-generation drone was launched in June 2022 to conduct long-distance test flights around the island.
Conclusion
The so-called "asymmetric combat" is essentially based on one's own strengths and defeating the enemy's shortcomings, and the People's Liberation Army is an expert in "asymmetric combat".
For a long time, in view of the actual gap between strength and the US military, the PLA has always regarded "asymmetric combat" as an important means to defeat the enemy, developed a series of targeted weapons and equipment, and gradually built an anti-intervention/regional denial combat system, which forced the US military to act cautiously when attempting to interfere with force.
In the future war of unification, the Taiwan authorities will face the PLA's all-round and all-element system suppression, from drones with outstanding performance and complete systems to multi-range long-range rocket launchers with long range and high accuracy, which will make the Taiwan military unpredictable.
Therefore, even if the Taiwan authorities have taken out more real money and strengthened their "asymmetric combat" capabilities, they are just showing off their skills and blocking the car.
■Spectacular scene of the new long-range rocket launcher of the People's Liberation Army conducting intensive salvos.
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