Taiwan flexes its muscles with growing display of homegrown weapons

Aug 10, 2011, 10:30 GMT

Taipei - Taiwan will beef up its arsenal of homegrown weapons eligible for public display this week, rolling out models of a supersonic anti-ship missile and a surface-to-air missile to flex muscle as it relies increasingly on its own hardware research.

The island's Ministry of National Defence previewed 161 pieces of hardware on Wednesday that it will introduce at the Taipei Aerospace & Defense Technology Exhibition this week. It exhibited 137 at the same show two years ago.

Among the showpieces is a mock-up of the homemade Hsiung Feng III supersonic missile with a range of 130 kilometres, enough to hit China. Visitors will also see models of the Tien Kung III surface-to-air missile and an indigenous fighter jet.

'The goal is to show off ... the status of our country's defence technology development and the military's hard work in the direction of relying on automation and modernisation,' the ministry said in a statement.

Taiwan relies increasingly on domestic research and development of weapons as chief military rival China surpasses it in terms of firepower but the island's major foreign arms supplier the United States shied away from new sales to keep up relations with Beijing.

China has claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists lost to Mao Zedong's Communists and fled to the island. Relations have improved through trade and transit talks since 2008, but China has not dropped the threat of force to capture Taiwan.

The August 11-14 show expects 91 exhibitors, down slightly from the 2009 exhibition that also generated 1.2 billion Taiwanese dollars (41.4 million US dollars) in business deals. Other attractions at the biennial event will include an unmanned aircraft and aerial sensing equipment, both useful in post-disaster search and rescue operations.