Volume 9 Issue 2
The Logic of the Strategic Thinking and Defensive Measures of the Overall Defensive Concept of Taiwan
By Hsinbiao Jiang
Introduction
While China has never renounced the use of force against Taiwan, the unification with Taiwan is still one ultimate goal of the Chinese regime. By 2035, China will seek to increase its economic and technological strength to become a “global leader in innovation” and to “basically” complete its military modernization.[1] China has been building and modernizing its military at an unprecedented rate.[2] The huge gap of military forces of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, as a result, prohibits Taiwan from engaging in a traditional war of attrition with China. To safeguard national security, Taiwan needs to implement the Overall Defense Concept (ODC) and, accordingly, build a reasonable force structure, acquire adequate weapons and equipment, develop joint doctrines, formulate joint plans, and improve joint training.
Wars are generally fought at strategic, campaign/operational, and tactical level. The ROC Armed Forces, however, tend to approach the conduct of war from the four aspects of strategy, tactics, battles, and warfighting skills. The text below will focus on the thinking of the superstructure on the operational level. The ODC covers all aspects of war based on a strategic thinking to prevent war from being waged by the enemy and to require Taiwan exercising discretion while building up a credible defensive force that can fight as well as end a war. These are the conditions for Taiwan to “win the war.” The three tenets of the ODC is force preservation, decisive battles in littoral zone, and destruction of enemy at landing beach.[3] They must be given high priorities so that the “winning of war” could be achieved to defend the homeland.
The Logic of the Strategic Thinking of the ODC
The fundamental national strategies encompass political, economic, psychological, technological, and military strategies. At the military front, multiple forms of hybrid warfare could be fought throughout all levels of war. They are guided by the national security strategy (NSS), national defense strategy (NDS), national military strategy (NMS), and the operational-level strategies. The ODC is focused and functioned differently at different levels of war. The logic of its thinking, nevertheless, is all based on the elements of “ends, ways, means, and risk” to allow in-depth analyses at all levels of war that lead to feasible courses of action with deliberate planning and arrangements to shape the conditions in favor of the execution of asymmetric defensive operations. The ends, ways, means, and risk form the logic of the thinking process and are also the first questions to be answered by strategic planners when they develop courses of action. The end is the goal and the desired end state of the strategic actions. The way refers to how the resources are spent to realize the intent and objective. The means is the resources used to accomplish strategic actions. They include human, financial, and material resources as well as space and time. The element of risk is the functioning of a risk control mechanism to minimize the risks and also set the bar of acceptable risks. The ends, ways, and means at all levels of war are laid out in the following table.
Table: The ends, ways, and means at all levels of war
Levels of War
|
Ends
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Ways
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Means
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National Security Strategy
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Prevention of War
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Strategic choices & resource allocation
|
Defend strategic centers of gravity
|
National Defense Strategy
|
Discretion on the conduct of war
|
Rational decision-making through proper mechanism
|
Defensive and offensive actions at critical areas
|
National Military Strategy
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Capability to fight a war
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Develop doctrines that win the war
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Joint command & control
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Operational-level Strategy
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Capability to end a war
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Build C5ISR that react to complex forms of threat
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Negate enemy air and maritime superiority & destroy hostile amphibious and airborne landing forces
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Data Sources: Policy Analyst Jiang organized his thoughts from Admiral Richard Y.K. Chen’s strategy. |
National Security Strategy Level
For an island nation that faces a much stronger enemy, the priority of the NSS is definitely the prevention of war. It is the objective of both the NSS and the ODC with the emphasis on strategic choices and resource allocation. As a defender, you need to first identify your own strategic centers of gravity, i.e., the strongest and weakest points of your advantages and inferiorities. However, the aggressor could also have a grasp of your strengths and weaknesses and make them the priority targets in wartime. The aggressor could first attack and destroy the defender’s critical forces and nodes, such as the main battle tanks, fighters, and destroyers, which tend to be the representation of warfighting capabilities in the people’s eyes. It could also target the electricity, oil and gas supplies, which directly link to the people’s morale. These actions could deal a serious blow to the morale and the will to fight and trigger an adverse chain of reactions leading to the defender’s failure. Therefore, the ODC at the NSS level is focused on peacetime effort to build the capabilities to react to enemy attacks by consolidating warfighting capabilities and securing critical energy supplies. It's not out of fear that Taiwan intends to prevent war. Prevention is premised on readiness. Readiness offers opportunities to end the war and therefore minimize the risks. It’s just as John F. Kennedy once said, “we prepare for war in order to deter war.”[4]
National Defense Strategy Level
Under the guidance of the NSS, the NDS ultimately aims to reflect a posture and resolve founded on discretion – being neither provocative nor intimidated – in the face of war. It is a war posture that supports the NSS and also the main purpose of the ODC. The NDS emphasizes the design of a mechanism that promotes rational decision-making and also focuses on the defensive and offensive actions at decisive points. Therefore, in the process of building up forces and readiness under the ODC, Taiwan must constantly be aware of how the means would be critically affecting the operations and what would be the key factors in operational sustainability. At this level, the resources are often the decisive factors. They could be tangible as the troops or fires or intangible as the morale, intelligence, or technological prowess. We can say it’s the resources that make the decisions. They are assets that a defender must protect and targets that an aggressor would want to attack.
National Military Strategy Level
The NMS aims to build capable warfighting capabilities. The ODC at the NMS level aims at setting the criteria for success, albeit not necessary the winning formula. It is like a manual of “the master’s secrets of martial art” which lay out the fundamentals as well as solutions that could be adaptively implemented. The ROC Armed Forces’ Gu-An Operations Plan (GAOP), which is a collection of scenarios and corresponding solutions, is one such manual. It could be read as a set of standard operating procedures (SOPs), but also allows dynamic adjustments and updates according to the development on the battlefield. Commanders should not stubbornly stick to the doctrines or confine themselves in formalities, but instead be responsive to the situations and adaptively implement the GAOP. The winning formula is embodied in operational design. The operational plans developed by the Office of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Operations and Planning (J3) of the Ministry of National Defense are executed by the Joint Operations Command Center (JOCC), or generally referred to as the Heng-shan Command Post, to command and control the strategic units and SOF units. In order to be more effective in joint missions and attain the objectives at operational and tactical level, the ODC at the NMS level should first identify the right mix of forces. To facilitate peacetime to wartime transition, joint forces commands (JFC) have been established at the level of the ten strategic units of the ROC Armed Forces. They include the Fleet Command, Marine Command, Joint Air Operations Center (JAOC), numbered armies, and regional defense commands. A joint command mechanism familiarized in peacetime will be a solid foundation for more efficient C2 operation in wartime.
Operational Level
The objective of strategies at the operational level is to stifle the sustainability of war. It requires being capable of fighting the war and therefore capable of ending the war. Building such capabilities relies on peacetime effort of force development and management. Geographically, Taiwan is a typical island nation. Taiwan’s ODC at the operational level is mainly focused on building capabilities to defend the nation's maritime rights and to maintain a well-functioning command, control, communications, computer, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C5ISR) system as well as a defensive force capable of responding to complex forms of warfare. The construct of island defense first requires integrated air and missile defense capabilities to negate the enemy's air and maritime superiority. It also needs swarming warfare capabilities to contain and destroy hostile amphibious/airborne landing forces. Therefore, an indispensable means of the ODC is building a joint strike force (JSF) with rapid mobility and highly efficient fires. When the JSF is able to contain and destroy hostile landing forces in the littorals and at landing beaches as well as airborne fields and successfully prevent the enemy from reinforcing their landing forces, it would then be possible for Taiwan to create turning points on the battlefield and deny the enemy's intent of taking over Taiwan. This is the way to achieve the desired end state through the result of the operations. One example is the Battle of Kinmen of 1949 when the ROC Armed Forces annihilated three People’s Liberation Army (PLA) landing regiments of about 9000 troops and obtained absolute victory that secured Taiwan and the offshore islands.[5]
The Defensive Measures of the ODC
Before developing defensive measures, the definition of “winning the war” should first be made clear. In the case of Taiwan, it means to deny the enemy’s intent of taking over Taiwan. Strategically, the traditional war of attrition should be abandoned. Instead, Taiwan should adopt asymmetric measures that aim to defeat the missions of the enemy and prevent the enemy from landing on Taiwan through amphibious and airborne operations. Under the guidance of the military strategy of “resolute defense and multi-domain deterrence,” the ODC’s three tenets for force buildup are force preservation, conventional capabilities and asymmetric capabilities.[6] The ODC of “force preservation, decisive battles in littoral zone, and destruction of enemy at landing beach” was developed. Under the ODC, the direction of force buildup plans should emphasize on the three areas of enhancing force preservation measures, developing asymmetric capabilities, and maintaining basic conventional capabilities.
1. Force Preservation Guidance and Force Buildup Principles
There should first be a clear awareness that the implementation of operational guidance is hinged upon the success of force preservation, while mobility is the key principle of force preservation. Ground troops should be able to maneuver to their tactical positions, conceal and disperse into urban or mountainous areas, and use fake targets for deception and camouflage. Light naval forces should be dispersed to fishing ports around Taiwan, while mid-to-large combatants should take advantage of Taiwan’s unique terrain features and maneuver to the eastern coast to take shelter under the screen of coastal cliffs and a noisy background that would undermine enemy radars’ surveillance and reconnaissance. One major military disaster of Taiwan is the inability to generate fighter sorties and thus seriously affect the employment of air combat capabilities. The Patriot Missiles and Tien Kung (TK, or Sky Bow) missiles should therefore be used to strengthen the protection of important airfields. There is also a necessity to diversify runways and a priority to build alternative runways, tilted runways, ski-jumps, highways, rapid runway repair capabilities, as well as anti-blast walls and close-in weapon systems for the protection of hangars. The principles of developing force preservation measures are mainly about mobility, deception, anti-blast, redundancy, close-in weapon systems (CIWS), diversification of runways, expanded utilization of civilian resources (communications, Internet, etc.), camouflage, concealment, jamming, rapid repair, emergency C2 systems, etc. Depending on the urgency of requirement, they should be built up in a phased manner to complete Taiwan’s force preservation mechanism.
The development of asymmetric capabilities should focus on systems that can be easily developed, difficult to detect, able to complicate enemy operations, small, numerous, smart, stealthy, precision, cheap, and mobile. They include mobile radars, mobile air defense systems, UAVs, stealthy light forces, micro-class missile assault boats (for swarm tactics), coastal mobile anti-ship missiles, rapid minelayers, low-cost short-range precision weapons, man-portable air defense systems, and mobile anti-armor weapons.
On the buildup of basic conventional capabilities, the concept is to maintain a limited but high-quality regular force that is able to patrol territorial air and sea and respond to local conflicts, while being capable of executing high-precision fire strike operations. The Ministry of Education and Ministry of Culture should implement policies to boost the people’s morale. There should also be seamless interagency cooperation to implement the mobilization of resources.
2. The Operational Guidance on Decisive Battles in Littoral Zone
The first thing is to define the “decisive battles in littoral zone.” Simply put, the battles will be fought in areas within the coverage of air support and anti-air missiles as well as the effective range of coastal anti-ship missiles. They are where naval forces and fires can be effectively employed and opportunities are the greatest for the joint fires to zero in on the enemy. The battles will happen in dynamically demarcated areas that change according to the reach of defensive forces and fires.
3. The Operational Guidance of Destruction of Enemy at Landing Beach
Amphibious landing operations are highly complicated military operations. The hostile boat waves heading toward the beach are at their most vulnerable time. Micro-class missile assault boats can be employed under the swarm tactics to attack hostile amphibious vessels in an overwhelming manner. Sea mines can also be laid along the anticipated incoming routes of hostile amphibious vessels, which will also sustain serious damages once they come into the range of coastal short-range precision ammunitions. The defensive obstacles should also be positioned on landing beaches in conjunction with the arrangement of coastal fires. It is absolutely critical for Taiwan to prevent the enemy’s heavy equipment from landing and therefore be able to defeat the enemy’s landing operations.
Conclusion
The strategic guidance of “winning the war” is to prevent war from happening in the first place, to exercise discretion in the conduct of war, to be capable of fighting a war, and therefore capable of ending a war. At any phase of the defensive operations of Taiwan, “winning the war” for the ROC Armed Forces means defeating the enemy’s mission to occupy Taiwan. There are four pathways to defeating enemy missions. First, Taiwan must abandon traditional war of attrition and look squarely at the reality of insufficient war resources. Taiwan should neither be in an arms race with the enemy, nor in a war of attrition. Taiwan should, instead, select the most ideal timing to chip away enemy advantages. Second, Taiwan should adopt asymmetric concepts and build weapon systems that are easy to develop and maintain and difficult to be attacked by the enemy, so as to complicate enemy operations. Third, Taiwan should aim at attacking enemy missions. This is an attack strategy of specific targeting. When the enemy is staging an amphibious invasion, Taiwan attacks the hostile amphibious landing ships. When the enemy is launching an airborne operation, Taiwan attacks the hostile airborne platforms. Fourth, Taiwan must prevent the enemy from landing and establishing footholds. This is the goal of “destruction of enemy at landing beach.” If the hostile forces fail to set up beachheads, they cannot augment their landing force and will be vulnerable to the defender’s attacks. When airborne troops are yet to secure their positions on ground, they are also extremely vulnerable and provide a good timing for the defender to wipe them out. The failure of enemy landing operations means that Taiwan can be secured. This is essential for homeland defense. In order to defeat the enemy’s mission to occupy Taiwan, the ROC Armed Forces must consolidate all defensive mechanisms and segments at all levels of war, thus laying the foundation to win the war and fully implement the ODC to safeguard national security.
Hsinbiao Jiang, a retired ROC Navy Captain, is a policy analyst at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, Taiwan.
[1]Office of the Secretary of Defense, “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020,” p. 4.
[2]Ben Westcott, “A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a bloody, logistical nightmare,” CNN, June 24, 2019, https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/23/asia/taiwan-china-invasion-intl-hnk/index.html.
[3] Michael Mazza, “Time to Harden the Last Line of Defense: Taiwan’s Reserve Force,” Global Taiwan Brief 5, no. 8, (April 22, 2020): p. 16.
[4]“Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy in the United States Senate, National Defense, February 29, 1960,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/united-states-senate-national-defense-19600229.
[5]Edward F. Chen, “Battle of Guningtou: The Republic of China Fights for Survival,” Warfare History Network, December 6, 2016, https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2016/12/06/battle-of-guningtou-the-republic-of-china-fights-for-survival/.
[6]Lee Hsi-min and Eric Lee, “Taiwan’s Overall Defense Concept, Explained,” The Diplomat, November 3, 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/taiwans-overall-defense-concept-explained/.