After losing Afghanistan and failing to arm Ukraine fast enough, does Taiwan really want to follow our "porcupine" strategy advice?
The U.S. will pressure Taiwan to buy "porcupine" strategy weapons.
For years, the United States has tried everything to get Taiwan onto a “porcupine strategy,” making the island a pricklier target that might make China think twice about attacking it.
U.S. officials have urged Taiwan to buy an asymmetric toolkit of coastal defense cruise missiles, loitering munitions, and shoulder-fired weapons that could sink Chinese boats before they land and bog down the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in a block-by-block fight if it gets ashore. Taiwan has instead mostly opted for a more conventional diet of submarines, fighter jets, and tanks.
The new aid package that focused on Ukraine and Israel incentivizes Taiwan to buy asymmetrical "porcupine" weapons:
While the package doesn’t legislate what will be heading over, the Biden administration might manage to finally get Taipei to go along with the porcupine strategy for good.
Welp, Taiwan is doomed (quoting an older post):
"Asymmetrical" concepts seem to miss the point that any weapon system or type of military unit has weaknesses that another weapon or type of unit must cover. That's why we embrace combined arms within the ground services and jointness between the services. It's rock, paper, scissors.
When I hear about asymmetric defenses, it almost always means that someone thinks that a country can escape the burden of defense spending by some clever device that undermines the enemy's entire expensive arsenal. Just because a country decides to use weapons other than carriers to fight carriers or weapons other than tanks to fight tanks doesn't make them asymmetric. It makes it war.
Sure, so-called "porcupine" weapons are needed (yet unsexy naval mines
rarely get mentioned). But such weapons will only impose a cost on the Chinese invaders. A cost China might be prepared to endure. I believe the more conventional weapons are absolutely
needed to drive the weakened invaders into the sea, a point I first made that has started to be recognized.
But as long as we're on the topic of asymmetrical means to protect Taiwan, let's talk about a real asymmetrical strategy.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.