The defense industry of the Republic of China (Taiwan) has successfully integrated the HF-3 supersonic anti-ship missile into the domestic-made F-CK-1 Ching-Kuo fighter jet.

This was reported by Naval News.

Despite the fact that the HF-3 was adopted earlier, its integration into combat aircraft faced difficulties due to its impressive size and weight of 1.5 tons.

The original version of the missile without a booster engine was too large to be mounted under the wing of existing fighters: it was 6 meters long and 0.5 meters wide.

In 2022, the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) launched a project to reduce the size of the HF-3 to make it suitable for air launch.

The engineers managed to reduce the length of the missile to 5.5 meters and the width to 0.3 meters.

Recently, local media published an image confirming that the upgraded version of the HF-3 has already been integrated into the Ching-Kuo fighter jet, which is now capable of carrying one such missile under each wing.

In early February, it was reported that the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense planned to strengthen airspace monitoring by purchasing additional E-2D long-range radar detection aircraft, which would improve the tracking of Chinese aircraft.

Hsiung Feng III

The Hsiung Feng III (HF-3) is a Taiwanese supersonic sea-, ground-, and air-launched anti-ship missile.

Its development was a response to China’s increasing military activity and the need to have a powerful weapon to defend the island.

The HF-3 is about 6 meters long (5.5 meters in the modified aircraft version), 0.5 meters in diameter (0.3 meters in the smaller version), and weighs about 1.5 tons.

It is capable of reaching a speed of Mach 2-3 (≈ 2450-3675 km/h) and hitting targets at a distance of up to 400 km.

The missile is equipped with a high-explosive or armor-piercing warhead weighing up to 225 kg, and its guidance system combines inertial navigation, active radar, and GPS.

The HF-3 is one of the fastest anti-ship missiles in its class. It can attack both sea and ground targets, making it an analog of the US AGM-158C LRASM.