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The Pentagon Is Planning a Drone ‘Hellscape’ to Defend Taiwan
The US Defense Department’s grand strategy for protecting Taiwan from a massive Chinese military offensive involves flooding the zone with thousands of drones.
As Pettyjohn points out to WIRED, the concept of Taiwan using densely layered defenses to inflict incredibly high losses on an invading Chinese force isn’tnew, with past visions of a “ porcupine strategy ” built on missiles and mines as deterrents to an outright invasion. According to the CNAS report, this strategy appears to have been sharpened by recent lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where the Ukrainian military has successfully deployed drones against the superiorly numbered and equipped Russian force to disrupt enemy formations, destroy armored vehicles, and even neutralize surface combatants. In May, the Pentagon announced its first tranche of fresh capabilities, which includes the accelerated fielding of more than 1,000 of defense contractor AeroVironment’s Switchblade-600 loitering munitions —a man-portable missile that circles over targets before dive-bombing them at the right moment—in the next year, as well as the procurement of uncrewed “ interceptor ” surface vessels under the department’s new Production-Ready, Inexpensive, Maritime Expeditionary(Prime) effort.
Or read this on Wired