The record What this system is, where it comes from, who operates it and which of Vigil’s modules it is relevant to — with the evidence each of those rests on.
Record
Conflict relevance
This is the catalogue's single record for this system. It is relevant to the module below; each module's Force Atlas shows how it is used there.
Battlefield role
Anti-ship strike from ground-based launchers and naval vessels, intended to make the waters around Taiwan costly to operate in rather than to contest control of them.
Strengths
Domestically designed and produced, so inventory expansion requires no foreign approval. Ground-launched systems are relatively cheap, numerous and mobile, which makes them hard to neutralise comprehensively — the essential logic of denial. Land-based anti-ship missiles are the capability most analysts across the spectrum agree Taiwan should buy more of.
Limitations
Denial is not defence: these systems raise the cost of maritime operations but do nothing about the non-military pressure that constitutes the actual daily activity in this system. Sustained production capacity, targeting support and survivability under attack are the real constraints, and none is publicly quantifiable.
Campaign relevance
Derived: a participant organisation in these campaigns carries a typed equipment association with this system. That is not the same as documented use of the system in the campaign itself.
- Defence reform and civil resilience programme Since 2022
via ROC Army (Documented, moderate confidence)
- Sustained pressure below the threshold Intensifying since 2020
via ROC Navy (Documented, high confidence)
- Coercive maritime interdiction — quarantine to blockade Assessed contingency
via ROC Navy (Documented, high confidence)
Visual identification
Two very different objects share the name. The ground-launched systems are seen as truck-mounted box launchers, four canisters on the subsonic variants and three larger ramp-angled ones on the supersonic; the ship-borne fit is a cluster of angled canisters on a deckhouse. The supersonic variant's air intakes on the missile body are the clearest single distinguishing feature in a photograph.
Documented conflict use
Publicly displayed at Taiwanese national day parades and defence exhibitions, and test-fired in announced trials; the Ministry of National Defense reported deployment of both principal variants during 2025 in response to large PLA naval activity. Production is run under the Sea-Air Combat Power Improvement Plan, a named and budgeted special programme covering 2022–2026, which is why the output figures that circulate are budget-derived rather than observed. The extended-range land-attack derivative, the Hsiung Sheng, entered mass production under the same programme and shares the production line. At the tri-service joint precision missile firing at Jiupeng in September 2026 both principal variants were fired inside a joint targeting exercise — the Hsiung Feng III by the Navy's littoral combat command and by a Coast Guard Administration cutter, the Hsiung Feng II from a Navy ship — on the defence ministry's own captions. Vigil records the programme and its announced milestones and publishes no inventories, battery locations or deployment detail.
Related key events
Taiwan runs a cross-service kill chain at Jiupeng, on a range, with no degradation described
Taiwan's armed forces held the 2026 tri-service joint precision missile firing at the Jiupeng range in Pingtung county from 16 to 18 September 2026; President Lai Ching-te inspected the final day. The Ministry of National Defense's news agency reported on 19 September that the firing followed kill-chain procedure — search, target acquisition, identification, target allocation and attack — using shipborne radar, Air Force air control, mobile radar vehicles and drones, joined through command-and-control nodes and a TAK battlefield-awareness interface to missiles and attack drones across services and platforms, and that firing units moved from force-preservation positions to fire and relocated afterwards. Its captions record Patriot, Tien Kung III and vehicle-mounted Sky Sword I fired by Air Force air-defence units, land-based Sky Sword II and HIMARS by the Army, Hsiung Feng III by the Navy's littoral combat command and by a coast guard cutter, Hsiung Feng II and Standard SM-1 from Navy ships, and MICA from a Mirage 2000. The president's office said multiple types of attack drone took part in a joint combat exercise for the first time. On the exercise's second day, 17 September, the ministry reported a PLA joint combat readiness patrol of nineteen sorties, fifteen across the median line, with a Y-8 electronic-jamming aircraft among the types named; it drew no connection to the exercise and this record draws none. The ministry's daily report published on 18 September, covering the twenty-four hours to 06:00 that morning and so the patrol, counted 28 sorties, 24 across the median line, with seven navy and two official vessels.
Assessed as of — 2026-09 Last reviewed — 2026-09-25