Alexa
  • Directory of Taiwan

Taiwan military news site accidentally reveals secret radar on outlying island

Radar system capable of tracking Chinese stealth jet

  6860
An earlier version of the NCSIST radar system (Wikicommons, Hsuan Shih-sheng photo)

An earlier version of the NCSIST radar system (Wikicommons, Hsuan Shih-sheng photo)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The military-run Youth Daily News accidentally revealed the presence of a sophisticated secret radar system in the island county of Penghu in the middle of the Taiwan Strait, reports said Thursday (April 8).

The slip-up came as Taiwan faces almost daily incursions by Chinese military planes into its air defense identification zone (ADIZ) and Chinese spy ships approach its waters, possibly to observe the missile tests planned for this month.

A Navy unit wrote to Youth Daily News from Penghu on March 26 with pictures showing a military truck in front of a ship. While there was no comment in the report about those photos, English-language website Alert 5 said on March 29 that they showed an “anti-stealth passive radar system.”

“This system has never been seen in public until now,” Alert 5 reported, adding that the radar’s receiver was stationary and larger than a system previously unveiled by the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST, 中科院), Taiwan’s major arms developer.

According to a UDN report, the confidential aspect of the case was not so much the existence of a radar system able to track stealth weapons, such as China’s J-20 fighter jet, as its stationing in Penghu, halfway between Taiwan’s main island and China.

The article was reportedly later removed, and the military is expected to take disciplinary action, reports said.