Taiwan has reported on progress in its plan to create a so-called exclusion zone for Chinese ships and aircraft. And this includes building a huge arsenal of missiles with various capabilities, purchasing thousands of drones, and creating coastal defense units.
Thus, an asymmetric response is being created to China's massive buildup of naval aviation, landing ships, and even involvement of barges together with civilian vessels. So it's necessary to think about how to repel all these assets during a possible invasion.
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So, Taiwan is conducting a plan from 2022 to 2026 to strengthen weapons against naval and air targets for $8 billion. And under it, 9 types of different cruise, anti-ship, and air defense missiles were immediately adopted.
Among them are supersonic anti-ship Hsiung Feng III and modernized cruise Hsiung Feng IIE with a range of up to 1,200 km. Overall, the HF line forms the basis of the island nation's ground-based missile forces arsenal.
They are also installed on the fleet. Thus, Tuo Chiang-class corvettes will be armed with a mix of 12 HF-II and HF-III, which will be reinforced by Kuang Hua VI-class missile boats with four HF-II each.
To cover all this from air threats, priority is given to Sea Sword and Sky Bow (Tien Kung) air defense systems. The latter is literally an attempt at local localization of American Patriot air defense systems, with the newest iteration shown this year.
Marine units are also being reformed with creation of both additional ground-based anti-ship missile batteries and adaptation of various unmanned vehicles.Moreover, this concerns both maritime and flying ones.
Overall, Taiwan planned to have 5,000 drones in 13 variants in service with the navy, air force, and army by 2028, but now the figure has been increased tenfold to 50,000. And this is not the end, because according to government officials, based on Ukraine's experience, even more are needed up to 5 million unmanned vehicles.
So we see that in accordance with the realities around it, the island nation is actively preparing for a possible invasion and, in addition to working out various scenarios, is also building up the capability to support an exclusion zone for China's fleet. The question remains whether it will be harmed by serious delays in supply of American weapons, such as new F-16Vs or NASAMS air defense systems.
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