Taiwan pursued a number of weapons of mass destruction programs from 1949 to the late 1980s. The final secret nuclear weapons program was shut down in the late 1980s under US pressure after completing all stages of weapons development besides final assembly and testing. Taiwan developed the AIDC F-CK-1 Ching-kuo and Sky Horse short-range ballistic missile as delivery systems. Currently, there is no evidence of Taiwan possessing any chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons from the United States were deployed to Taiwan from 1958 to 1972, during a period of higher tensions with China, including the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
Nuclear weapons During the Cold War, the United States deployed nuclear weapons on Taiwan as part of the United States Taiwan Defense Command. In 1972, United States president Richard Nixon ordered nuclear weapons to be removed from Taiwan and this was implemented by 1974. Nuclear weapons are known to have been stored at Tainan Air Force Base.
Research program The development of nuclear weapons by Taiwan has been a contentious issue, as it had been triggered by the People's Republic of China first nuclear test in 1964. The United States, hoping to avoid escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait, has continually opposed arming Taiwan with nuclear weapons after 1979. Accordingly, Taiwan adheres to the principles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has stated that it does not intend to produce nuclear weapons, on an official basis. Past nuclear research by Taiwan makes it a "threshold" nuclear state. In 1967, a secret nuclear weapons program began under the auspices of the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) at the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology. Taiwan was able to acquire nuclear technology from abroad (including a research reactor from Canada and low-grade plutonium from the United States) allegedly for a civilian energy system, but in actuality to develop fuel for nuclear weapons. Taiwan bought 100 tons of uranium metal from South Africa which was delivered between 1973 and 1974. During the 1970s, Taiwan had an active program to produce plutonium using heavy water reactors. However, after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found evidence of Taiwan's efforts to produce weapons-grade plutonium, Taiwan agreed in September 1976 under U.S. pressure to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. A study by the Mitre Corporation in 1977, included Taiwan in a list of "insecure" nuclear threshold states—states with the technical capability to develop nuclear weapons and the security motivations to seriously contemplate such an option. The other states were Israel, South Africa, South Korea, and Yugoslavia. U.S. intelligence also believed that Taiwan had designed devices suitable for nuclear testing. In 1980 the Taiwanese contracted for 4,000 tons of uranium metal from South Africa although it is not known how much of this order was ever delivered. The leaders of the program needed very high assurance in the functioning and reliability of any nuclear device they designed, but without the ability to conduct a full-scale nuclear weapons test. Besides the need to keep the program covert, an underground nuclear test was not feasible on a small and densely populated island such as Taiwan. Therefore, the program used specialised computer software to simulate nuclear weapon explosions, the code of which was constantly upgraded and improved as more knowledge was acquired via experiments or by clandestine information gathering. To circumvent detection by foreign intelligence agencies while developing and refining necessary skills, Taiwan developed many dual-use activities, such as "anti-tank projectile" experiments. These involved uranium metal plates being slammed together at a tremendous velocity under controlled conditions, and high-speed diagnostic equipment monitoring the impact while recording temperature and pressure data, which was then fed back into the computer simulation software to improve the accuracy of how a nuclear device would behave during and after detonation. These tests also allowed the testing of the reliability of the high explosives to be used in warheads and the detonating systems used to ensure the simultaneous triggering of many explosive panels on any implosion type designs. As well as enabling relevant data to be gathered and analyzed, these activities allowed Taiwanese technicians to practice daily the skills needed to produce actual warheads (such as the tooling of radioactive metals into individual components) if the order was ever given to begin full-scale production of nuclear weapons. The secret nuclear weapon program was revealed after the 1987 Lieyu massacre, when Colonel Chang Hsien-yi Deputy Director of Nuclear Research at INER, who was secretly working for the CIA, defected to the U.S. in December 1987 and produced a cache of incriminating documents. General Hau Pei-tsun claimed that scientists in Taiwan had already produced a controlled nuclear reaction. Under pressure from the U.S., the program was halted. A study into the secret program concluded that at the time of Chang's defection, Taiwan was one or two years away from being able to complete a deliverable weapon. Chang claims that Madame Chiang Kai Shek and military officials loyal to her had expedited the development of nuclear weapons and even set up a parallel chain of command to further their agenda. In 1987 the warhead design had a diameter of 60–70 cm with casing and a weight of 900 kg meaning that further miniaturization would have been needed to optimize the weapon for delivery.
Delivery systems
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