As Chinese military aircraft and naval vessels continue to operate around Taiwan with increasingly complex maneuvers, the public debate in Taipei often centers on a familiar set of questions: How many missiles are enough? How many drones should be acquired? How large should next year’s defense budget be?
Those questions matter, but they are not the most important.
The deeper issue is whether Taiwan can sustain military effectiveness if supply chains are disrupted, infrastructure is degraded and external resupply slows or stops. In other words, the central test of deterrence is not what Taiwan can deploy in the first phase of a crisis, but whether it can regenerate capability over time.
Delays in foreign weapons deliveries have exposed the risk of relying heavily on overseas production. In peacetime, delays are political irritants. In wartime, they are strategic liabilities. If replenishment depends on contested sea lanes or politics thousands of kilometers away, Taiwan’s endurance becomes uncertain.
Modern warfare is no longer defined primarily by platform superiority. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that adaptation speed, repair cycles and munitions replenishment can determine battlefield momentum. Ukraine’s ability to keep systems functioning despite heavy attrition has relied not only on foreign aid, but also on rapidly expanding domestic drone production, local repair workshops and flexible logistics networks. Survival has depended as much on regeneration as on acquisition.
Israel offers another example. For decades, it has maintained a defense industrial base designed not only to produce advanced systems, but to modify, repair and upgrade them quickly in response to changing threats. During periods of intense conflict, rapid integration of battlefield feedback into system updates has been critical to maintaining an operational advantage. That institutional capacity for iteration has been as important as hardware inventories.
South Korea’s experience is also instructive. Faced with a persistent security threat from North Korea, Seoul invested heavily in domestic ammunition production and defense manufacturing. The goal was not self-sufficiency in every category, but the ability to sustain operations even if external supply chains were strained. South Korea’s defense sector supports both national resilience and export strength, reinforcing its strategic autonomy.
Finland provides a European example. Long before joining NATO, Helsinki built a comprehensive civil defense and reserve mobilization system designed for prolonged crisis conditions. Infrastructure redundancy, decentralized logistics and stockpiled materials were treated as core elements of deterrence. The message was clear: Coercion would not produce rapid collapse.
The cases share a common theme. Durable deterrence depends on the capacity to absorb shocks and regenerate strength.
Taiwan has made important progress in shifting toward asymmetric defense, emphasizing mobile missile systems, distributed launchers and uncrewed platforms. The direction is strategically sound. However, asymmetric systems still require maintenance, software updates, spare parts and replacement components. A drone force is only as effective as its repair and replenishment cycle. Missile batteries must be reloaded. Sensors require recalibration. Networks demand constant cybersecurity adaptation.
If Taiwan’s debate focuses primarily on procurement totals, it risks overlooking the infrastructure layer that sustains capability under pressure.
The next crisis in the Taiwan Strait is unlikely to begin with a traditional amphibious invasion. More plausible scenarios involve maritime quarantine operations, cyber disruptions, airspace pressure or limited blockades designed to test political resolve. In such circumstances, the decisive factor might not be firepower, but maintaining operational coherence over weeks or months.
That means domestic munitions production capacity matters, and so do propulsion systems, electronics supply chains and software integration facilities. Institutionalized battle damage repair processes are not glamorous, but they determine whether damaged systems return to service quickly or remain sidelined.
Equally important is the integration of civil infrastructure resilience into defense planning. Energy redundancy, hardened communications networks and continuity of government procedures shape whether society remains functional during sustained coercion. A country that continues operating normally despite pressure complicates an adversary’s escalation strategy.
Taiwan has taken steps toward broader societal resilience planning, but the efforts are often framed as emergency preparedness rather than core elements of deterrence. They should be viewed as part of the defense architecture itself.
Budget debates in the Legislative Yuan deserve to expand beyond headline procurement items. Investments in logistics resilience, repair capacity and supply chain localization might lack the visibility of new platforms, but they enhance strategic depth. The goal is not to match an adversary system for system, but to ensure that Taiwan’s forces remain operational under strain.
Integration with partners should also evolve. Joint training exercises can incorporate sustainment simulations and repair coordination rather than focusing solely on signaling. Interoperability should include shared maintenance protocols and contingency logistics planning. If Taiwan’s facilities and expertise are embedded within allied assumptions, its role in regional stability strengthens.
None of it requires Taiwan to become the largest defense producer in Asia. It requires clarity about what kind of resilience matters most. A defense posture built around acquisition alone risks brittleness. A posture built around regeneration and adaptation creates endurance.
Taiwan’s strategic challenge is unique, but not unprecedented. Countries facing persistent security threats have long understood that survival depends on the capacity to withstand prolonged pressure. Deterrence rests not only on the ability to inflict costs, but on the ability to endure them.
As military activity around Taiwan intensifies, discussion should move beyond counting platforms. The more consequential question is whether Taiwan can maintain combat effectiveness when stress accumulates.
In the end, deterrence is not measured only in weapons acquired, but in systems sustained.
Juan Fernando Herrera Ramos is a Honduran journalist based in Taipei. His work on Taiwan-China-Latin America relations has been published in the Nikkei Asia, The Diplomat and the Taipei Times.
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