The Taiwanese navy can no longer hope to compete with China for control of the waters adjoining Taiwan and should instead embark on a program that focuses on “sea denial,” two academics argue in a landmark study of Taiwan’s naval strategy.
Calling for a break with Taiwan’s naval power paradigm, Chinese navy experts James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara of the US Naval War College write that denying the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) use of the waters around Taiwan would be nearly as effective for homeland defense as fighting for outright sea control, as designated in the current strategy.
To achieve sea denial — the naval strategy of the weaker side in a conflict — Taipei would have to “forgo its desire for sea control” and “resist the allure of the high-end ships strong navies use to take command of vital expanses,” they write in the 67-page Defending the Strait: Taiwan’s Naval Strategy in the 21st Century published this week by the Jamestown Foundation, adding that “reconfiguring the fleet and devising inventive tactics would let the ROCN [Republic of China Navy] take advantage of the -island’s geography.”
The days when the Taiwanese navy could rely on technological superiority to overcome numerical inferiority are gone, the authors say. Given this, rather than aim for high-value platforms such as the Kidd-class destroyers acquired in 2005 and 2006, Taiwan should develop and deploy “swarms of small surface and subsurface combatants” to wage a “people’s war at sea” that would make its naval forces “an exceptionally hard target that packs a wallop.”
Such a fleet, they write, would likely be sufficient to deter the Chinese or buy sufficient time for the US and perhaps Japan to intervene.
This paradigm shift would require a culture change in the navy, the authors argue, as the required doctrine, strategy and acquisition “inverts the natural order of things for naval officers accustomed to commanding the sea.”
It would also require Taipei to forgo “desirable,” albeit no longer feasible, priorities such as sea-lane security and the defense of the Spratlys — a tough sell with government officials, influential academics and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the electorate.
“Protecting the homeland comes first. It avails Taiwan little to sacrifice its independence for the sake of secondary objectives,” they write.
It will also mean abandoning the concept of surface action groups (SAG) inherited from the US Navy. This concept, which revolves around a high-value flagship accompanied by a flotilla, reflects the long-term strategic competition that pitted the US and the Soviet Union against each other during the Cold War and remains relevant today for navies whose power projection is global in scope. While a SAG-based strategy applies to a certain extent to the PLAN, it is of little relevance to Taiwan today, which has more limited capabilities and requirements.
Taiwan no longer has the luxury of a “balanced fleet that is capable in every dimension of naval warfare,” such as securing sea lanes and breaking maritime blockades, and should instead create “an unbalanced fleet, seeking out comparative advantages, targeting finite resources to bolster these advantages, and cutting back ruthlessly on functions that lie beyond the ROCN’s means.”
This would require changes in fleet and culture, and the divorcing of sea-denial and coastal defense asymmetrical means like fast--attack craft and shore-based missiles from high-value platforms intended for sea control.
A decentralization of command-and-control would also be necessary to meet that objective and ensure more autonomy in decision-making, they write.
This approach appears to have received the blessing of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Deputy Minister of National Defense Andrew Yang (楊念祖), they write, though there is scant reason to believe that the Taiwanese military establishment has accepted it, as demonstrated by successive editions of the National Defense Report that leave the statement of aims practically unchanged.
Clinging to a SAG naval strategy will only create opportunities for China to defeat Taiwan’s military on day one, the authors write. As such, a new strategy that exploits the advantages of the weaker party is the best, and possibly only, option for Taiwan.
“If the only options are fruitless war and peace on Chinese terms, then Taiwanese officials may opt for the less destructive choice, regardless of whether it conforms to their wishes or those of the citizenry,” they write. “So long as Taipei can deter war or hold off a Chinese attack long enough for US forces to intervene, then an agreeable outcome — indefinite de facto independence — will remain in view.”
BILINGUAL ASSISTANCE: The center launched a chat bot that features Chinese and English interfaces to provide foreigners with instant information about the pandemic The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday said that it would discuss with other nations the possibility of allowing businesspeople to visit on a case-by-case basis. Asked about loosening border restrictions, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said at the daily CECC news briefing that while the center is cautious about opening the nation’s borders, it would aim to diminish obstacles for important trade interactions without risking transmission of the novel coronavirus. Several foreign representatives in Taiwan have expressed an interest in the matter and the center would conduct related negotiations with the help of the
DELUSIONAL: The male patient said he did not know that the woman had mental problems, but the court said that her being restrained in isolation should have given him pause The Taiwan High Court has ordered the Jhudong branch of the Taiwan National University Hospital and a male patient to jointly pay a former female patient’s family NT$400,000 in compensation after the man had sex with the woman, who has mental problems, while hospitalized. The 26-year-old woman has been diagnosed with a mental disorder, a symptom of which is that she obsessively seeks to have sex, her mother said. The mother filed a formal complaint and sought damages from the hospital and the male patient surnamed Chen (陳) after finding out that her daughter had sex with the man while
The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) should not use the government’s disease-prevention policy as an excuse to block people’s access to the Taipei Railway Station’s main hall, the Taiwan International Workers’ Association said yesterday. The association held a protest at the station after what organizers said were about 400 people staged a sit-in on Saturday to demonstrate against the TRA’s proposal to ban sitting on the floor of the main hall. In accordance with the Central Epidemic Command Center’s disease-prevention measures, large gatherings have been banned in the hall since the end of February. After protesters yesterday expressed their grievances at the southern
Nematode-trapping fungi have been found to be natural killers of nematodes and their mechanisms might facilitate the development of new drugs or biological control agents, an Academia Sinica researcher said yesterday. Mostly measuring less than 1mm, nematodes are found in soil worldwide and most are not visible to the naked eye, Academia Sinica Institute of Molecular Biology assistant research fellow Hsueh Yen-ping (薛雁冰) told a news conference in Taipei. Some nematodes can cause infections in humans or damage plants, but existing pesticides, such as ivermectin, aldicarb and levamisole, can only inhibit their activity and the poisons’ efficacy are declining due to
RSS