RIVISTA ITALIANA DIFESA
US elaborates a drones’ masterplan to protect Taiwan 11/09/2024 | Fabio Di Felice

A new report from the Center for New American Security (CNAS) calls for using low-cost drones to build a lethal shield against an amphibious invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army forces. In detail, Stacie Pettyjohn, one of the authors of the report “Swarms Over the Strait,” said that the drones’ weapon would give the Asiatic Island “a layered defense of uncrewed systems and precision strike,” and reduce the time-distance issue of reinforcing Taiwan by a coalition force.

During an interview a few weeks ago, Admiral Sam Paparo, Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, anticipated the report release just saying that Taiwan’s best defense rests on having unmanned autonomous systems in place, and “eliminating the tyranny of distance.” The report calls for heavy investments in autonomous all-domains kamikaze drones by Taiwan, which “could provide autonomous terminal guidance for contested environments.” Thousands of hide and ready-to-go air, sea, and ground drones working orchestrated in Taiwan could turn the 100 nautical miles separating the island from the Chinese mainland into a “hellscape” in case of invasion. This wall of drones would be able to target Chinese amphibious and supporting vessels in port as well as during their strait transit creating a terrific impact on the invading force, physically and psychologically. The same could happen in the case of Air-Land operations, with the unmanned systems attacking transport aircraft and assembly areas.

Andrew Metrick, a fellow at CNAS, supporting the report recommendations, highlighted as an example what is happening in the Black Sea, where the combination of Kiev’s maritime drones and antiship missiles have rendered the Russian Fleet ineffective. A lethal application of the Anti-Access/Area Denial concepts, which are catastrophically important in the case of Joint Forcible Entry Operations (JFEO). As PLA knows very well. So does the Pentagon, which already announced the birth of the REPLICATOR initiative to field hundreds of thousands of drones quickly has a deterrent effect. A significant effort of the US industry is to “build both the commercial and military drone industrial base to scale production and create surge capacity,” as recommended in the CNAS report.

In line with the CNAS recommendations, according to the Taipei Times, the Taiwanese government has already started to procure nearly 1,000 additional AI-enabled attack drones in the next year, with plans to expand the indigenous production to prevent issues in weapons transfers from the US and, more importantly, reduce the reliance from Chinese-made commercial off-the-shelf parts.

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