The Key To Winning A Pacific War: Cheap Cruise Missiles
Taiwan should buy a lot of inexpensive munitions
Cheap ground-launched cruise missiles could be the decisive weapons of the next Pacific war. They’re concealable, mobile, just accurate enough to hit some of the time, just powerful enough to inflict meaningful damage and—most importantly—simple enough to be inexpensive and mass-producible. These munitions could sink fleets, wipe out air forces, unravel supply lines and devastate war industries.
Look at the damage inflicted on the Russian oil industry by Ukraine’s Flamingos and other cheap but conventional cruise missiles and by the new generation, one-way attack drones that are essentially dirt-cheap cruise missiles.
Thousands of kilometers away in the Western Pacific, the country with the most and best cheap cruise missiles could have an edge in war across the Taiwan Strait. That’s good news for Taiwan, mixed news for China—and challenging news for the United States.
Surely mindful of Ukraine’s success developing and deploying an array of cheap cruise missiles and attack drones often costing just $100,000 or less, Taiwan is scrambling to develop and deploy similar munitions, with the national defense-technology institute leading the way.
They include the Chien Feng IV one-way attack drone, which is a Taiwanese take on the Iran-designed Shahed, thousands of which Russia flings at Ukrainian cities every month. The institute is also working on an 800-km ground-launched cruise missile based on the Barracuda-500 from U.S. firm Anduril. For that, it has capped the unit cost at just $200,000.
Geography favours the Taiwanese missile arsenal. A Chinese invasion fleet sailing across the 130-km-wide Taiwan Strait is a strike planner’s dream—if that planner has enough munitions on hand. There’d be no need for a meticulous strategy meant to deliver second- and third-order effects on complex enemy systems and dispersed infrastructure. Just shoot.
Read the rest at The Strategist.
The US hasn't focused on high volume replaceable weapons since WW2 and has often looked for the gold plated options. It's amazing how many expensive systems are being destroyed or sidelined by disposable weapons. Hopefully the US is taking this near peer war and it's lessons to heart.
You’ve gotta be kidding… is this just a placed ad for weapons manufacturers? As soon as a war broke out, the supply chain would be cut. The war could never last. That’s why they want Taiwan to buy as many weapons as possible ahead of time.