Mon, Aug 24, 2026 page8

• Brahma Chellaney On Taiwan: Taiwan is becoming a harder target for China

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  The Iran and Ukraine wars are rewriting modern military strategy. These conflicts are demonstrating that a less conventionally powerful state, by leveraging asymmetric capabilities, can impose major costs on an aggressor and fundamentally reshape the outcome of conflict. Taiwan is not only drawing lessons from those conflicts, but also translating them into practice.

  Far from seeking to match China ship for ship, missile for missile or aircraft for aircraft, Taiwan needs to make Chinese aggression so costly, problematic and uncertain that Beijing is deterred from launching an attack. Taiwan cannot become a bigger wolf than China, but it can ensure that no predator seeks to swallow it without getting badly wounded.

  That is the logic driving Taiwan’s long-overdue pivot toward asymmetric capabilities — aerial drones, autonomous attack boats, land-based anti-ship missiles, mobile air defenses and other relatively inexpensive, distributed weapons.

  

  The shift has been accelerated by developments in two very different wars: Ukraine’s growing capability to target energy and other strategic sites deep inside Russia and Iran’s refusal to bend to American coercion, leaving US President Donald Trump struggling for a face-saving way to exit the war he initiated. Both conflicts have shown that, despite sophisticated and expensive weapons remaining important, large numbers of cheap, mobile and expendable systems can impose disproportionate costs on a stronger opponent.

  Ukraine has been the more important model for Taipei, given how Kyiv has stalled Russia’s advances on the battlefield by taking the war to the enemy’s heartland. Ukraine has shown that drones can transform the battlefield by providing surveillance, targeting and strike capabilities at a fraction of the cost of conventional aircraft. Taiwan’s defense planners are also studying Iran’s use of drones and missiles to impose regional costs on the US by striking American bases and facilities in the Middle East.

  Nothing matters more for Taipei than deterring Chinese aggression.

  For Beijing, invading Taiwan would be an exceptionally difficult amphibious operation for several reasons: the Taiwan Strait is about 130 kilometers wide at the narrowest point; weather is favorable for a major crossing only during a few windows each year; Taiwan has relatively few beaches suitable for large-scale amphibious landings; and many of those beach approaches lead into mountainous or urban terrain. Above all, China would have to move enormous quantities of troops, equipment, ammunition and supplies across the Strait while under attack.

  That is exactly where Taiwan’s asymmetric strategy can impose significant costs on its foe. To turn the Strait and the approaches to Taiwan’s coastline into a killing zone, land-based anti-ship missiles can attack Chinese vessels while autonomous attack boats can swarm larger naval ships and landing craft. Drones, for their part, can provide constant surveillance and strike targets without putting Taiwanese pilots at risk. Mobile air defenses can frustrate China’s effort to establish air superiority.

  In such a scenario, the objective will not be to win a traditional naval battle, but to prevent Beijing from achieving the quick victory on which its invasion strategy would depend.

  Taiwan, learning the right lessons from conflicts elsewhere, is already making substantial progress. It is on track to produce more than 1,000 Hsiung Feng II and III anti-ship missiles by this year-end. Its heavy investment in layered air defenses combines expensive Patriot interceptors with much cheaper and more widely distributable Stinger missiles.

  What stands out, however, is the scale of Taiwan’s drone-manufacturing goal, which is aimed at creating deterrence against China while also building export leverage abroad. It plans to produce 100,000 drones a month within four and a half years, with roughly half intended for export, while its military is likely to acquire more than 210,000 aerial and sea-based drones.

  To plug a potential vulnerability, Taiwan has formed a new “Littoral Combat Command” to help integrate drones, mobile missiles and artillery so that these separate systems become components of a unified coastal-defense architecture. This is a wise step.

  Reducing its traditional reliance on imported big-ticket platforms in favor of relatively cheap, distributed asymmetric systems is making Taiwan a harder target for China.

  Taiwan, of course, still needs fighter aircraft, submarines, sophisticated air defenses and other high-end capabilities. But big-ticket systems should form the upper layer of a broader defense architecture rather than constitute its foundation. The foundation should be survivability, dispersion and punitive response.

  That is especially important because China may choose to begin a war not with an amphibious invasion, but by seeking to isolate and slowly strangle Taiwan.

  A blockade or quarantine could be used to disrupt shipping, intimidate commercial traffic, restrict energy supplies and even sever Taiwan’s communications with the outside world. Taiwan’s dependence on subsea cables makes this a particularly acute vulnerability. Without a single Chinese soldier setting foot on Taiwan, a communications blackout could create confusion and panic, disrupting financial markets, government operations, emergency services, logistics, military command-and-control, and the flow of information to the outside world.

  Seen in this light, Taiwan’s recent exercise simulating an internet disruption was more than just a civil-defense drill. By deliberately throttling mobile data across parts of the island, Taiwan tested how citizens, businesses and institutions would function if communications were degraded during a crisis.

  Such preparations are pivotal to an asymmetric strategy. Overwhelming an invading force with asymmetric capabilities depends on resilient networks so that drones and unmanned attack boats can detect targets, sensors can transmit information, missile batteries can receive targeting data, military commanders can communicate with dispersed units, and civilian authorities can coordinate emergency responses. If China were to sever Taiwan’s communications before the Taiwanese military could respond to an invasion, even an impressive arsenal of drones, missiles, artillery and autonomous attack boats would not be able to repulse aggression.

  If resilience is to define national defense, Taiwan needs to invest not only in redundant communications and alternative satellite links, but also in hardened command networks, distributed data centers, backup power, and communications systems that can function when conventional internet access is cut. Taiwanese society should be able to operate under degraded communications conditions for weeks. And even when portions of the communications network are destroyed or jammed, Taiwan’s drones, missiles, sensors and command centers must remain operational.

  Taiwan is rightly seeking to leverage its extraordinary technological and manufacturing base to build a defense-industrial ecosystem capable of mass-producing drones, autonomous systems, sensors, communications equipment and other expendable technologies. In fact, Taiwan has already begun to emerge as a significant drone exporter.

  The ultimate purpose of the pivot from prestige weapons to asymmetric capabilities is not to prepare Taiwan to fight a war indefinitely. Rather, it is to make Beijing realize that starting a war would be a disastrous gamble.

  Making Taiwan too hard to blind, too hard to blockade, too hard to invade and ultimately too painful to conquer would establish enduring deterrence.

  Brahma Chellaney, professor emeritus of strategic studies at the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of nine books, including the award-winning Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press).
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