Taiwan beefs up anti-ship missile arsenal to counter threat of Chinese invasion

Taiwan will 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 towards a so-called asymmetric strategy, where the island'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, say current and former Taiwan
military officers.
Taiwan, these officers say, 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 or ships blockading the island.
The officers 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 defence analysts, and interviews with
Taiwanese government officials.
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 parliament approved 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, deputy chief executive officer for research
at the Institute for National Defence 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 ship," Ou
told Reuters, referring to the People's Liberation Army, China's military.
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're China, "one thing
you'd not want to deal with is 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."
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.
Taiwan's defence ministry 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 defence ministry and Taiwan
Affairs Office didn't 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 didn't respond to questions for this story.
As part of efforts to further boost
its defences, Taiwan is seeking US President Donald Trump's now in the
pipeline worth up to $14 billion.
Trump said last month he would soon
decide on the sale after holding talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in
Beijing. During their talks, Xi warned Trump that mishandling Taiwan could lead
to conflict between the two superpowers.
Beijing, which views Taiwan as its
own territory, has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under
its control. Taiwan rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims, saying only the
island's people can decide their future.
LEARNING FROM UKRAINE AND IRAN
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
argue that anti-ship missiles, particularly those 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 island'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,
a retired Taiwanese naval officer who served on Taiwan's National Security
Council. "And the Chinese know where they are," he said.
Taiwan's defence ministry said
existing anti-ship missiles were "deployed in a mobile and dispersed
manner to preserve combat effectiveness." Missiles in fixed positions, it
said, were "equipped with protective and backup mechanisms and can be
converted to mobile configurations as needed to enhance battlefield
survivability."
While Taiwan's military doesn't
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 island, according to two senior Taiwanese government officials who spoke
on condition of anonymity.
Deliveries will begin this year
under an arms sale valued at $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 told Reuters 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 island's military
will also have about 1,000 or more domestically produced Hsiung Feng II and
Hsiung Feng III anti-ship cruise missiles, according to Ou and two senior
Taiwanese government officials. That would bring Taiwan's anti-ship missile arsenal
to about 1,850.
This estimate of where Taiwan's
anti-ship missile inventory will stand by 2029 assumes US deliveries proceed
largely on time and in full. It doesn't 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 $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, according to
one of the senior Taiwanese officials.
A Pentagon official, Michael F.
Miller, the director of the Defence Security Cooperation Agency, confirmed in
testimony at a congressional hearing in March that Taiwan is America's top
priority for Harpoon deliveries.
To coordinate this extra firepower,
the Taiwan military on 1 July will 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 will bolster their objective of resisting an attempted invasion for
long enough to give allied forces time to come to the island's aid.
"We must always be prepared to
fight a prolonged, war-of-attrition-style battle," Ou said.
















