Taiwan deals with Chinese military aircraft around its borders on an almost daily basis, leading to a greater need for the country to boost its air defense. We look at how the new NASAMS air defense system from the U.S will help with Taiwan's defense.
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00:00So, Olli, what does NASAMS add to Taiwan's overall defense and why is this weapon system
00:05significant?
00:06NASAMS is actually a really important system to add to Taiwan's multi-layered integrated
00:14air defense.
00:15What is really important to understand as a starting point is that the war in Ukraine
00:20has really highlighted the sort of renaissance, if you will, of short and medium range air
00:26defense systems.
00:27And this is exactly because this demand comes from the realization that cruise missiles,
00:36one-way attack drones, and these smaller munitions are really an important part of the offense.
00:44So being able to defeat these kinds of capabilities, not just the high-end ballistic missiles,
00:50is really important.
00:51Well, Taiwan already has other air defense systems like the Patriot 2, the Patriot 3,
00:57the domestically made Tiankong.
00:59Is there anything different that NASAMS adds to it or how will this weapon be used?
01:04So we have, like you mentioned, the Patriot and Tiankong, two Tiankong 3 systems that
01:09are the high-end, defending against long-range air threats, defending against incoming tactical
01:15ballistic missiles.
01:17But they may not be the most effective or economical means to target cruise missiles,
01:23for example, or these one-way attack drones that we now see is a really major part of
01:29the threat picture.
01:30The Tianjin 2 system, that is a very similar locally designed and manufactured system to
01:38the NASAMS.
01:40So Taiwan is building already a similar capability, for example, in Ukraine and what we've seen
01:48in Iran's attacks in April and in October this year against Israel, that there's a very
01:55high likelihood that adversary would start with overwhelming saturation attack.
02:01So having this high capacity to defeat multiple targets at the same time is very much needed.
02:08And this is the kind of capabilities that are required as well.
02:12You talk a lot about the war in Ukraine.
02:14In terms of air defense, what are some of the lessons that Taiwan can learn from how
02:17Ukraine is defending itself?
02:20So it's not really just the missile systems and the various air defense artillery and
02:27all of this, but that's also the resilience in terms of passive defenses.
02:32So how can we survive an attack that we have to expect that some of these missiles do come
02:39through across, do come through the defenses, they leak through.
02:44So this is just the fact that there will be those leakers.
02:48So we need to make sure that we can survive, we can continue fighting regardless.
02:56And this then adds to these capability requirements that they are not always the most headline
03:03crapping technological solutions.
03:07They might be these passive defense things like camouflage, hardening, tactical adaptations,
03:15spreading capabilities wider, keeping them constantly on the move.
03:20These are the solutions at the tactical operational level that come into it, as well as then electronic
03:25warfare.