Taiwan is to sharply increase its arsenal of powerful anti-ship missiles to more than 1,800 by early 2029, as it seeks to enhance its capacity to counter a mounting threat of blockade or invasion by China, according to a Reuters calculation.
This expanding arsenal of weapons that can be fired from aircraft, ships and ground-based launchers is part of Taiwan’s shift toward a so-called asymmetric strategy, where the nation's defenders seek to offset China’s massive advantage in firepower with big numbers of affordable, but deadly weapons.
These also include shorter-range missiles and swarms of surface and aerial drones, current and former Taiwan military officers said.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
Taiwan aims to build a resilient force designed to survive an opening Chinese air-and-missile bombardment and emerge in a position to strike an invasion fleet of ships blockading the nation, the officers said.
They point to the success of Ukraine and Iran in using missiles and drones to level the playing field in battling more powerful adversaries.
The Reuters calculation of Taiwan’s growing anti-ship missile arsenal is based on arms trade data, US export approval documents, estimates from defense analysts and interviews with Taiwanese government officials.
Photo: Tyrone Siu, Reuters
Additional precision missiles with sufficient range to attack Chinese vessels in the Taiwan Strait or forces at embarkation ports on China’s coast, are also in the pipeline after Taiwan’s opposition-controlled legislature approved an extra US$25 billion in defense spending for US munitions last month.
The spearhead of Taiwan’s anti-ship arsenal is made up of US-supplied Harpoon missiles and domestically produced Hsiung Feng missiles.
A big force of these weapons would allow Taiwan to set up a “kill zone” in the Taiwan Strait, an area where concentrated firepower would inflict heavy losses in a bid to defeat a Chinese invasion, said Ou Si-fu (歐錫富), deputy chief executive officer for research at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, Taiwan’s top military think tank.
“Our goal is to stop them from landing and completing their mission, not to destroy every PLA [Chinese People’s Liberation Army] ship,” Ou said.
Investing in anti-ship missiles is a sensible move, said Grant Newsham, a retired US Marine Corps colonel and researcher at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies.
If you are China, “one thing you’d not want to deal with are long-range precision weapons that can crack your ships in half before they even set out across the Taiwan Strait, or at any point between the Chinese mainland” and Taiwan’s shores, Newsham said.
“Employed properly and with adequate numbers, these missiles are a huge problem for a Chinese invasion force,” he added.
To mount an invasion across the Taiwan Strait, China would need to deploy an armada of warships and civilian transports, according to military experts.
China has the world’s biggest navy and a massive merchant fleet.
The Ministry of National Defense said in a statement that anti-ship missiles “can establish a powerful maritime strike capability and degrade the enemy’s combat effectiveness. Details regarding their deployment involve military security and are not disclosed.”
China’s Ministry of National Defense and Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a request for comment.
The Pentagon had no comment on Taiwan’s specific capabilities, delivery timelines or potential future security assistance packages, an official said in response to questions from Reuters.
The White House did not respond to questions for this story.
As part of efforts to further boost its defenses, Taiwan is seeking US President Donald Trump's approval for an arms sale package now in the pipeline worth up to US$14 billion.
Trump said last month he would soon decide on the sale after holding talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing.
During their talks, Xi warned Trump that mishandling Taiwan could lead to conflict between the two superpowers.
Ou and other military experts point to Ukraine’s success in attacking Russian warships and transports with missiles and surface drones in the Black Sea as evidence that this strategy could be effective for Taiwan in resisting a Chinese invasion or blockade. Iran’s continuing ability to attack shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and strike other regional targets despite more than a month of massive US and Israeli air-and-missile strikes demonstrated how a weaker power could retain the capacity to fight back, they said.
Proponents of this type of warfare say that anti-ship missiles, particularly mounted on ground-based mobile launchers, could be dispersed and concealed around Taiwan.
This would make it more difficult for the PLA to detect and destroy them in the initial waves of an attack.
One problem: Many of the nation's anti-ship missiles are still deployed on warships and at fixed ground installations where they are vulnerable to pre-emptive strikes, said Yuster Yu (于孝斌), a retired Taiwanese naval officer who served on the National Security Council.
“And, the Chinese know where they are,” he said.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said existing anti-ship missiles were “deployed in a mobile and dispersed manner to preserve combat effectiveness.”
Missiles in fixed positions were “equipped with protective and backup mechanisms and can be converted to mobile configurations as needed to enhance battlefield survivability,” it said.
While Taiwan’s military does not disclose the size of its weapons inventories, the figure of more than 1,800 anti-ship missiles includes 450 Boeing-made Harpoon missiles so far delivered to the nation, according to two senior Taiwanese government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Deliveries of another 400 of these sea-skimming cruise missiles are to begin this year under an arms sale valued at US$2.4 billion that was approved in the final months of the first Trump administration in late 2020.
All of the 400 missiles are expected to be delivered by the end of March 2029, according to US government arms sales approval documents.
The Taiwanese navy said in a statement that according to the letter of offer signed by the US in 2021, the missiles would be delivered on schedule.
If these deliveries proceed as scheduled, Taiwan would have 850 Harpoon missiles by early 2029.
By then, the nation's military would also have about 1,000 or more domestically produced Hsiung Feng II and Hsiung Feng III anti-ship cruise missiles, Ou and two senior Taiwanese government officials said.
That would bring Taiwan’s anti-ship missile arsenal to about 1,850.
This estimate of where Taiwan’s anti-ship missile inventory is to stand by 2029 assumes US deliveries proceed largely on time and in full.
It does not account for potential production bottlenecks or competing wartime demands on US stocks that could slow deliveries.
One of the two senior Taiwanese officials told Reuters the delivery timetable could slip to 2030.
In separate arms deals, Washington has also approved the sale of another 195 air-launched Harpoon missiles or missiles derived from this weapon, valued at a combined US$1.36 billion, according to US government approval documents and arms trade data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The two sides are still negotiating the terms of these deals and no delivery date has been agreed, one of the senior Taiwanese officials said.
A Pentagon official, Michael F. Miller, the director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, confirmed in testimony at a congressional hearing in March that Taiwan is the US' top priority for Harpoon deliveries.
To coordinate this extra firepower, Taiwan's military on July 1 is to form a new Littoral Combat Command to combine its coastal radars, anti-ship missiles and drones into one force.
For Taiwan's defenders, the anti-ship missiles are to bolster their objective of resisting an attempted invasion for long enough to give allied forces time to come to the nation's aid.
“We must always be prepared to fight a prolonged, war-of-attrition style battle,” Ou said.
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