Artillery: More Mobile Missiles Against China
June 29, 2020: Taiwan wants to buy several dozen American Harpoon II anti-ship missiles for use on truck-mounted launchers. The land-based missiles would quickly be moved to where needed and fired at oncoming Chinese ships. While Taiwan already manufactures locally designed anti-ship missiles, it needs to import Harpoons to get its land-based missile force up to strength by 2022. Taiwan believes that with enough truck-mounted anti-ship missiles they could cripple any Chinese invasion fleet. Taiwan calculated it would be cheaper, and faster, to import Harpoon IIs than to expand their own anti-ship missile production capability.
Taiwan first faced this shortage in early 2019 when they approved the production of Hsiung Feng 2B anti-ship missile. Only 36 of these new models were ordered because that was how many could be produced by 2023. Hsiung Feng 2B has greater range (250 kilometers compared to 160 in earlier versions) and is better able to resist jamming and other countermeasures. The 685 kg (1,507 pound) Hsiung Feng 2 surface to surface version is stored in a firing container. The missile is 4.8 meters (14.9 feet) long, 400mm in diameter and has a 180 kg (400 pound) warhead. The Hsiung Feng 2 first appeared in the 1990s and has undergone several upgrades since then. These improvements concentrate on extending the range and improving the guidance system. Current versions of Hsiung Feng 2 use GPS/INS to reach the general vicinity of the target then employ pattern recognition (via an onboard electronic database) to select a specific (or one of several worth hitting) targets and go after that ship. For its final approach, Hsiung Feng 2 speeds up to near-supersonic (250 meters a second) speed.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20200629.aspx
