- The top US Navy admiral in the Pacific has said the US plans to use thousands of drones if China invades Taiwan.
- He added that the “deserted hellscape” would buy Taiwan time for the United States to come to its rescue.
- China’s drills around the island last month raised questions about what a blockade or invasion might look like.
If China invades Taiwan, it could face a large, powerful drone force aimed at making Taiwan’s military “miserable.”
At least that’s the plan, according to the top US admiral in the Pacific, who said the “hellscape” strategy was designed to distract China and buy the US time to respond.
“I want to use a number of classified capabilities to turn the Taiwan Strait into an uninhabited hellhole,” Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told The Washington Post at the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Shangri-La Dialogue summit.
That way, he said, “you can make their life incredibly miserable for a month and buy yourself time to do everything else.”
The plan involves launching thousands of unmanned systems, from surface ships and submarines to aerial drones, to counter any Chinese invading forces as soon as they begin to cross the Taiwan Strait, effectively acting as a kind of first line of defense.
This kind of strategy requires a big investment in cheap, reliable drones, which is what the US is doing with Project Replicator. Last year, the Department of Defense formalized the program, a long-term plan to deploy thousands of autonomous systems.
Progress on this ambitious plan has been relatively quiet, but there are some signs of movement.
In March, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said the Pentagon planned to spend $1 billion on the Replicator this fiscal year. She highlighted several capabilities the program’s first drones will need, and the Pentagon is working with defense partners to develop and acquire these systems.
Last summer, Hicks said the Replicator was aimed at countering China’s “biggest advantage”: its size: “More ships, more missiles, more people.” She said, “We [People’s Liberation Army’s] We will attack the masses with our own masses, but our masses will be harder to plan for, harder to attack, and harder to defeat.”
The former head of the Indo-Pacific Command said last year that U.S. unmanned capabilities “will give us an asymmetric advantage.” “The operational concepts we’re working on right now will help us increase our advantage in the region,” he said, adding, “We use the term ‘hellscape.'”
Paparo’s comments about the “hellscape” strategy came shortly after the Chinese military conducted large-scale military exercises around Taiwan in which they effectively surrounded the island and demonstrated the capabilities of their joint forces.
The exercise showed Taiwan and the United States how quickly and easily China can implement a blockade, but it also served as a learning opportunity for the U.S. military.
After the drill, Paparo said the exercise was “like a rehearsal for an invasion,” and told Japan’s Nikkei newspaper: “We watched the exercise, took notes and learned from it. And the exercise helped us prepare for the future.”
