Taiwan airline seeks role in ‘whole of society’ defence with surveillance flights to counter China

OPEN TO NEW IDEAS

Taiwan’s defence ministry has so far been cautious about external partners, telling Reuters it is able to effectively monitor Chinese activities and currently has no plans for cooperation. But it said it was open to new ideas.

“The ministry welcomes discussions on ‘public-private collaboration’ to strengthen national defence build-up,” it said in a statement.

Taiwan’s coast guard said it is working to boost its own reconnaissance capacity and will prioritise drones before gradually expanding the effort to include manned aircraft.

Apex has spent more than T$400 million (US$13.07 million) to convert an 11-seater Italian-made Tecnam P2012 Traveller propeller plane into a reconnaissance aircraft equipped with a US-made synthetic aperture radar under its fuselage.

The company wants to feed data from the radar, which can detect objects as small as 0.09 sq m, to Taiwan’s military and the coast guard as they track Chinese ships around the island.

The business opportunity goes beyond Taiwan.

Apex said it could also market the relatively low-cost patrol service to friendly governments in the region that monitor Chinese activity, adding it can quickly build a reconnaissance fleet with both aircraft and drones.

LEGAL UNCERTAINTIES

Experts said authorities must establish a legal basis to allow civilian aircraft to engage in reconnaissance and also raised concerns about whether they would be made vulnerable to Chinese forces.

“Patrol aircraft involves the use of enforcement. Whether enforcement can be handed off to the private sector is a matter of legal debate,” Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at Taiwan’s top military think tank, the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, said.

But the cost of flying a light aircraft on a reconnaissance mission could be as low as one-tenth of a military plane.