Taiwan may launch a spy satellite in three years to step up its surveillance of military activities of rival China in the face of growing missile threats from Beijing, a newspaper reported on Monday.
Costing up to $300-million, the planned satellite, codenamed ”Follow-On RSS” (remote surveillance satellite) would be able to take images as close as 50cm from any scanned area, the major newspaper United Daily News reported.
The paper quoted an unnamed Taiwanese official as saying the military and security authorities have to increase their reliance on images taken from their existing Formosa II ”research” satellite after most of the intelligence networks in China were uncovered by the mainland in the past five years.
With China aiming more than 700 missiles at Taiwan, it is highly necessary for the island to step up its surveillance of any military movement on the mainland, which is just 300km from the island, the official was quoted as saying.
Taiwan’s Formosa II, launched with the aid of the United States in 2004, is able to take images from areas as close as 1,8m, but its durability is expected to end between 2008 and 2009.
The official said this explains why Taiwan needs to launch the ”Follow-On RSS” between 2008 and 2009 to replace Formosa II, which the island claims is merely for research purposes, including studying topographic and atmospheric conditions.
Taiwan and China have remained at loggerheads since the two sides split at the end of a civil war in 1949. Beijing has threatened to attack Taiwan should it declare formal independence from the mainland. – Sapa-DPA