Taiwan Seeks US Sea Mines, Cruise Missiles

Taiwan is in discussions with the United States on acquiring underwater sea mines to deter amphibious landings as well as cruise missiles for coastal defence, Taipei's top representative in the United States said on Wednesday.

Speaking to the Washington's Hudson Institute think tank, Hsiao Bi-khim said Taiwan was facing "an existential survival issue," given Beijing's territorial and sovereignty claims over the island and needed to expand its asymmetric capabilities.

"What we mean by asymmetric capabilities is cost effective, but lethal enough to become deterrence – to make any consideration of an invasion very painful," she said.

Hsiao said Taipei was working with the United States on acquiring a number of hardware capabilities, including cruise missiles that would work in conjunction with Taiwan's indigenous Hsiung Feng missile system to provide better coastal defence.

Other systems under discussion included "underwater sea mines and other capabilities to deter amphibious landing, or immediate attack," she said.

Earlier, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen told the online event she had made expanding accelerating development of Taiwan's asymmetric defence capabilities its number-one priority.

Hsiao said Taiwan also wanted to strengthen defences on islands its controls in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost in its entirety.

"For Taiwan, our priority in our survival involves building up the defence of Taiwan itself, but also of the islands that Taiwan currently controls in the South China Sea," she said.

Taiwan has been bolstering its defences in the face of what it sees as increasingly threatening moves by Beijing.

It said in May it plans to buy land-based Boeing-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles and US sources said last week that Washington was negotiating the sale of at least four sophisticated aerial drones to Taiwan for the first time.

This week, US Health Secretary Alex Azar became the highest-level US official to visit Taiwan in four decades, a trip condemned by Beijing, which routinely denounces arms sales to Taipei. (Reuters)