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
Medium- to long-range surface-to-air defence, providing the domestically produced layer of an integrated system alongside imported Patriot batteries.
Strengths
Domestic design and production means inventory can be expanded without foreign approval, delivery schedules or political conditionality — the single most strategically valuable attribute any Taiwanese capability can have in the current period, and increasingly recognised as such in Taiwanese defence debate.
Limitations
Domestic production capacity is finite, and scaling interceptor output is a slower and harder industrial problem than designing the missile. Performance claims for the newer variants rest largely on official statements and are not independently verified. As with any air defence, it raises cost and complexity for an attacker rather than conferring immunity.
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.
- The declared unification framework Declared plan
via Republic of China Armed Forces (Documented, moderate confidence)
- Defence reform and civil resilience programme Since 2022
via Republic of China Armed Forces (Documented, moderate confidence)
- Sustained pressure below the threshold Intensifying since 2020
via ROC Air Force (Documented, moderate confidence)
- The Cold War strait crises 1954 – 1996
via Republic of China Armed Forces (Documented, moderate confidence)
Visual identification
Fired from truck-drawn or trailer-mounted vertical launch boxes rather than the angled canisters of the older imported systems; the associated phased-array radar is a large flat panel on a trailer. In flight the missile is a slender single-stage body with small cruciform control surfaces at the rear. The launchers are the recognisable element, not the missile.
Documented conflict use
Publicly test-fired in announced trials, displayed at national day parades and defence exhibitions, and named in Taiwan's published defence budgets — including the 2026 special defence budget, where indigenous interceptor production is one of the largest single lines. Successive variants have been announced by the Ministry of National Defense with claimed improvements in altitude and range against ballistic threats. Those are official statements and are not independently verified; Vigil records the announcements as announcements and publishes no interceptor inventories, battery locations or engagement data.
Branch & service operators
- ROC Air Force Documented
- Republic of China Armed Forces Documented
Documented formations
- ROC Air Force Air Defense and Missile Command Documented · high confidence
Related key events
Special defence budget passed at NT$780bn, well below the request
After months of gridlock, Taiwan's Legislative Yuan passes a multi-year special defence budget of NT$780bn — substantially more than the opposition's initial NT$380bn counter-proposal, and roughly 38% below the NT$1.25tn the executive had sought to fund US procurement, domestic industry and an integrated air-defence programme.
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 — 2026-09-09