Taiwan is hugely outgunned by China. But its ‘porcupine’ defence plan just might work

Brave Wind could blow attacking ships away

When a powerful Chinese force surrounded Taiwan in a record-large display of force prompted by a fiery speech from Taiwan’s new president Lai Ching-te on October 14, Taiwanese troops responded in kind. 
Taiwanese jets launched to meet Chinese jets. Taiwanese warships put to sea and tailed Chinese warships. And Taiwanese army anti-ship batteries, equipped with mobile launchers for Hsiung Feng (“Brave Wind”) anti-ship missiles, rolled out from their bases and took up firing positions along the Taiwanese coast.
The missiles might matter most if a Chinese military drill ever turns into an actual invasion of Taiwan. The Chinese air force and navy outgun the Taiwanese air force and navy by an order of magnitude. No one expects Taiwan’s roughly 400 fighter jets and 70 warships to last long against China’s thousands of fighter jets and hundreds of warships.
But those Taiwanese missile batteries, tucked into hard-to-spot hillside redoubts, could ride out the devastating Chinese bombardment that would surely precede any invasion attempt – and then target the invaders when they’re most vulnerable: while crossing the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait, aiming for the handful of beaches that are suitable for a large landing force.
Sink the invasion fleet, save the island. That’s the thinking behind Taiwan’s emerging “porcupine” defence strategy. Instead of meeting bigger and better-armed Chinese forces on the high seas and in mid-air, certain Taiwanese forces would lie in wait. A growing arsenal of anti-ship missiles, soon to be organised into a separate coastal defence force, could be the spines of the porcupine.
It’s not for no reason that Taipei is spending billions of dollars to reinforce the army’s existing inventory of locally-made Hsiung Feng anti-ship missiles with American-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles. Both missiles are subsonic, boast tiny radars for terminal guidance and hug the wavetops to avoid interception as they range between 75 and 160 miles in search of enemy ships. 
As part of a $2-billion deal the Taiwanese inked with the Americans in 2020, Taiwan is getting 400 Harpoon Block II missiles along with 100 truck-mounted launchers and 25 mobile radars.
The first of the new missiles arrived in late September. The last should reach the island country in 2028. The Taiwanese army is spending millions of dollars building new bases to house the Harpoon batteries, but in wartime the batteries would disperse to fortified positions peppering the coast – some of them built by occupying Japanese forces during World War II.
Counting Harpoons and Hsiung Fengs, Taiwan might be able to deploy more than a thousand land-based anti-ship missiles against a Chinese fleet in the early hours of a Chinese invasion. Chinese bombardment would surely take out some of the Taiwanese batteries before they can launch. Chinese air-defences would knock down other missiles in mid-air. 
How many missiles get through could make the difference between victory and defeat for Taiwan. In 2023, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC gamed out a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and concluded that American bombers and submarines would beat the invasion after sinking around 60 Chinese ships. There are reasons to be optimistic that hundreds of Taiwanese anti-ship missiles could inflict similar damage.
Consider the success that Ukraine has had with a much smaller force of land-based anti-ship missiles. In April 2022, two months after Russia widened its war on Ukraine, the Ukrainian navy’s sole battery armed with locally-made Neptune cruise missiles – a munition not dissimilar to the Harpoon – put two missiles into the Russian navy cruiser Moskva in the western Black Sea, sinking the vessel and kicking off a devastating campaign of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes that, more than two years later, has whittled the Russian Black Sea Fleet down by a third and forced it to retreat to Russian waters.  
Another Neptune strike in March may have damaged a Russian salvage vessel. Ukraine obtained surplus Harpoons from the United States, Denmark and the Netherlands and, in June 2022, sank a Russian tugboat with the missiles.
Ukraine has probably never had more than a few dozen Neptunes and Harpoons, and actually fired most of the former at targets on land. The Ukrainians have had remarkable success with the few missiles they’ve devoted to anti-ship missions.  
The Chinese navy’s missile defences are probably better than the antiquated systems that defended Moskva, but no defences are foolproof. If Taiwan can disperse its anti-ship batteries in time to avoid the worst of a Chinese bombardment and then concentrate their fire at the fattest targets within the invasion fleet – amphibious ships and troop transports – it could inflict decisive damage.
It’s possible just one out of every 10 Taiwanese missiles would have to hit in order to sink most of the most important ships – and block the one and only attempt China will get to invade and conquer Taiwan.