Posted on 01/11/2018 7:01:01 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Taiwan-manufactured Sky Sword II missiles will see their usage and adaptation expanded so they can help Taiwan’s Air Force tackle the threat from China’s Sukhoi Su-35 jets, reports said Wednesday.
The Taiwanese weapon was developed in the 1990s as a medium-range air-to-air missile at the National Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST, 中科院).
According to a report in the Liberty Times, the sea-to-air version of the Sky Sword II (天劍二) will be distributed to the Taiwan Navy’s Lafayette frigates from 2020 to 2028. In addition, Indigenous Defense Fighter (經國號) jets will see their number of missiles double from two to four per plane, a move targeted at China’s Chengdu J-20 stealth aircraft and Sukhoi Su-35 jets.
An upgraded version of the Taiwanese missile has expanded its range from 60 kilometers to 100 km, the Liberty Times reported. Its maximum speed amounted to Mach 6, or six times the speed of sound, sufficient to counter the Mach 2 speeds of the Su-35.
Ping.
Mach 6 is a pretty impressive speed, even for 100 km.
It makes me think we are under reporting the performance of our missiles or Russia is exaggerating the speed of their’s, especially the SA-10+ SAMS.
We canned all our better missiles and the ones we have left we didn’t significantly upgrade.
Also, we don’t seem to have done anything to defend against ‘AWACS killer’ missiles, which pretty much everyone who would be our assailant or would find themselves up against an AWACS like system has been concentrating on for decades now.
If their supporting AWACS gets taken out, even MiG-29s can take out our F-22s and our F-35s if they have to acquire their own targets - or worse, radiate. This has been shown in multiple exercises where our fighters had to go into action without AWACS support. It’s a BIG glaring problem in our doctrine and capabilities.
In the modern battlespace, you radiate - you die.
Without AWACs, our battle strategy is drastically altered.
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