The Canada-based Kanwa Defense Review has released satellite images taken in March that revealed Taiwan's advanced land-attack cruise missile nearby of the southeast coast of mainland China.
The Hsiung Feng IIE land-attack cruise missile was stationed in Taoyuan city which is approximately 50 kilometers of Taipei and 250 kilometers from Fuzhou, the capital city of Fujian province. Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of Kanwa Defense Review, said the cruise missile has a mid-range strike distance of between 1,000 and 1,500 kilometers. This would mean that it can strike Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangdong, and Zhejiang if an armed conflict between China and Taiwan erupts.
"The deployment started in March, which means the Taiwanese military is able to carry out in-depth strategic strikes against [the mainland]," Chang said as quoted by the South China Morning Post.
"Based on its range, all nuclear power plant reactors, state strategic oil reserve facilities near Zhoushan [in eastern China's Zhejiang province], and the Beijing-Kowloon Railway and other high-speed railways and tunnels would be targeted," he added.
A former Chinese defense official believed that China is already in possession of a weapon that can counter the Hsiung Feng IIE land-attack cruise missile. Song Zhongping, a former member of the PLA's then Second Artillery CorpsSong, said Taiwan's new cruise missile has many similarities with the Tomahawk long-range subsonic cruise missile of the United States.
"The PLA's missile defense systems are able to intercept the Tomahawk, so the Hsiung Feng IIE is not a big deal, because now the mainland's defense system has also expanded from land-based to also ship-based," he said.
Taiwan's defense ministry made no comments about the Hsiung Feng IIE according to the South China Morning Post.
Meanwhile, the Taipei Times has reported about Wan Chien cruise missile that has just been declared fully operational and ready for use by the Aerospace Industrial Development Corp-built Indigenous Defense Fighters. The reported said the newly operational missile was developed by the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, the same entity that built the Hsiung Feng IIE. It was not immediately clear, however, if the two missiles were the same.
The Wan Chien cruise missile has an effective range of more than 200 kilometers and can target China's coastal military air bases and amphibious ship groups, an anonymous Taiwanese defense official told the Taipei Times. With the new operational missile, Taiwan military can fire from the Taiwan Strait, targeting Fujian and Guandong provinces, the official surmised.
