The United States military is still examining a batch of sparrow missiles that misfired last year during a drill in southern Pingtung County, but has so far not managed to reach a conclusion on the cause of the malfunction, the Taiwan Air Force said yesterday.
The U.S. has conducted preliminary examinations on the medium-range missiles that went off the mark during a live-fire missile exercise in Jiupeng in January 2011. The initial report states that the misfire was partly due to radar malfunctions.
The U.S. experts also found some issues with the sparrow missiles' thrusters that could result in misfires, the Air Force said.
The U.S. Navy is currently conducting further tests but it has yet to inform Taiwan of any concrete plan to make amendments to the missiles, it said.
The Air Force made the comments in response to a Chinese-language report yesterday that said the batch of malfunctioning sparrow missiles could seriously undermine Taiwan's air defense capabilities if the U.S. side fails to come up with concrete solutions as soon as possible.
The batch of sparrow anti-air missiles had been showing signs of errors for several years. The latest incident occurred during the January 2011 air drill, according to the United Evening News.
During the drill, the military fired off a total of 19 missiles — two more than initially planned — six of which failed to hit their targets.
Among the 19 missiles, a sparrow anti-air missile shut off and dropped to the sea six seconds after launch. An extra Sparrow missile fired by the Army also overshot the target. The poor performance greatly disappointed President Ma Ying-jeou.
At a live-fire missile exercise at the same base earlier this month, the medium-range guided missiles were excluded from exercises since the U.S. has not made a positive response on how to deal with the technical problems, the report added.
The U.S.' inability to offer concrete solutions has seriously damaged Taiwan's air defense capability and the flawed sparrow missiles are also seen as a huge waste of taxpayers' money as the batch of missiles is worth a total of NT$300 million, it said.
In response, the Air Force said yesterday that it is still waiting for the U.S.' final report, but it stressed that the nation's air defense capability will not be jeopardized simply because of the absence of sparrow missiles.
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