Taiwan Air Defenses – Does Taiwan have any Real Effective Air Defense to Counter a Chinese Air Attack?

Video Above: U.S. and China: South China Sea Tensions

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

China’s recent 20-fighter jet-strong flyby of J-10s and J-16s over Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone amounts to what the Pentagon may see as a transparent provocation or “power statement” by Beijing. There were even larger fly-overs of the ADIZ before in Oct., 2021 as well, indicating a Chinese interest in possibly highlighting Taiwan’s vulnerability to major air attack. Taiwan does not appear to have large numbers of air defenses or advanced surface-to-air missiles (SAMS). Taiwan is known to operate Patriot missiles and is in the process of acquiring more according to numerous news reports, yet Patriot interceptors are not equipped to counter fighter jets. A Patriot can track and destroy an incoming ballistic missile to a growing extent, to include multiple maneuvering targets at once, yet it falls well short of being able to attack overhead fighter jets.

Could Taiwan counter any Chinese fighter jets with SAMS? Maybe, but it may come down to a question of scale, numbers and territory. Should Taiwan have effective SAMS, would there be enough of them over wide enough of a range to counter a large Chinese air campaign? That may be unclear. Taiwan does have domestically-engineered Sky Bow III Tien Kung Surface to Air Missile systems built by the Taiwan-based National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology. The weapons have an ability to track and intercept ballistic missiles, fighter jets and other airborne threats out to ranges of approximately 200km, according to a report in Army Technology.

“TK III land-based air defence weapon system is composed of surface-to-air missile, canister, and mobile fire control units, including phased array radar, communication relay, engagement control station, launcher, and power plant equipment,” the Army-Technology report says. The Skybow, the Army-Technology report says, is engineered with an active radar guidance system, internal midcourse guidance and microwave seeker in the nose of the missile for accuracy.

The Skybow has “four tail fins and is vertically launched. A directional warhead with high-energy fragments enables the missile to destroy targets with high single-shot probability of kill. The missile launcher has four containers, which support both TK III and TK II missiles,” the Army-Technology report states.

The weapons are in the process of being integrated into fixed locations around Taiwan.