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, U.S. export approval documents, estimates from defense 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 an extra $25 billion in defense spending for U.S. munitions last month.
The spearhead of Taiwan’s anti-ship arsenal is made up of U.S.-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 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 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 U.S. Marine Corps colonel and researcher at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies.
U.S. stocks mostly gained ground Thursday as progress toward ending the Iran war buoyed investor sentiment.
If you’re 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.”
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.
Taiwanese navy personnel sail on board the Kuang Hua VI-class missile boat as part of an exercise in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in early 2025. By boosting its anti-ship missile arsenal, Taiwan hopes to bolster its ability to resist an attempted Chinese invasion long enough to give allied forces time to come to its aid.
Taiwan’s defense 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.”
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