Taiwan’s Porcupine Strategy

October 8, 2025

In the contest for Taiwan’s security, the conventional paradigm of big platforms (aircraft, capital ships, heavy armor) is increasingly risky. Against a numerically superior People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Taiwan’s defense must emphasize survivability, dispersion, saturation, and cost imposition. This is the essence of the “porcupine strategy” — a defense posture built on many smaller, harder-to-kill systems rather than a few expensive, vulnerable assets.

Meanwhile, the experience in Ukraine demonstrates how distributed systems, cheap drones, loitering munitions, resilient networks, and rapid adaptation matter more than ever in modern conflict. The United States has a unique opportunity to bridge lessons learned in Ukraine into the Indo-Pacific, enabling INDOPACOM and Taiwan to co-develop or transfer relevant technologies to strengthen deterrence and defense.

What Is Taiwan’s Porcupine Strategy?

The term “porcupine strategy” refers to defending by making an invasion so costly and difficult that an adversary hesitates to commit. In Taiwan’s context, this means:

  • “A large number of small things” — many dispersed, low-cost, mobile systems that can survive first strikes and still operate.
  • Prioritizing short-range air defense, small anti-ship missiles, mines, fast attack craft, drones, coastal defenses, hardened nodes, and distributed sensors.
  • Accepting that many legacy assets (aircraft, large ships) may be degraded early, thus serving a supporting role rather than a primary deterrent.
  • Emphasizing resilient command and control, redundancy, mobility, camouflage/concealment, and elasticity under missile or cyber attack.

This approach aligns well with Taiwan’s geography (island, narrow strait, rugged terrain) and resource constraints. It aims to turn any attempted invasion into a protracted, high-casualty, uncertain gamble for the PLA.

What Ukraine Teaches Us: Distributed Warfare, Innovation, and Adaptation

Ukraine’s defense against Russia has showcased a series of lessons that align to the porcupine approach:

  • Drone swarms and loitering munitions as low-cost disruptors of higher-end systems
  • Distributed sensors and C2 nodes that continue functioning even under strike
  • Rapid local adaptation and field improvisation (e.g. adding kits, modifying drones, integrating commercial tech) - this cannot be understated and may be the most enduring lesson learned.
  • Emphasis on attrition, denial, and area denial rather than seeking total battlefield dominance

As one analysis puts it, Taiwan’s drone strategy should “emulate Ukraine’s relatively conservative use of naval drones and protect those capabilities with counter-UAS” methods. (U.S. Naval Institute)

These lessons are directly relevant to Taiwan’s defense challenge across the Strait: inexpensive systems operating in numbers may bludgeon a more powerful invader, so long as networks of defense remain resilient and denying.

Tech Transfer: Ukraine to INDOPACOM & Taiwan

To accelerate Taiwan’s porcupine posture and strengthen INDOPACOM’s deterrent, the U.S. (in coordination with Ukraine, allies, and Taiwan) can facilitate technology and concept transfer in several domains:

1. Drone / Uncrewed Systems & Payloads

  • Transfer or co-develop modular drone platforms, swarm control software, autonomy tool kits, and sensor packages refined in Ukraine.
  • Share lessons on node survivability, jamming resistance, SIGINT/EMSO warfare resilience developed in contested Eastern Europe.
  • Provide software libraries, AI/ML models, autonomy stacks (edge inference, target discrimination) for Taiwanese adaptation.

2. Counter-UAS & Electronic Warfare Tools

  • Move counter-drone detection, jamming/hardening, and EW packages learned in Ukraine to the Taiwan theater.
  • Share risk-hardened communications links, secure mesh networks, resilient C2 designs that have withstood Russian attacks.

3. Logistics, Sustainment & Repair in Degraded Conditions

  • Transfer mobile repair and field-expeditionary maintenance kits proven under large-scale drone conflict.
  • Use Ukrainian supply chain adaptations to guide how Taiwan and U.S. partners prepare stockpiles, fallback repair nodes, and modular logistics for Pacific islands.

4. Distributed ISR & Sensor Fusion

  • Incorporate multispectral sensor payloads, wide-area ISR, and sensor fusion architectures refined in Ukraine’s fight.
  • Adapt AI/analytics, data fusion, anomaly detection systems used in Ukraine to detect PLA maritime and aerial movements near Taiwan.

5. Doctrine, Training, and Wargaming

  • Exchange lessons learned on distributed employment, attrition warfare, swarm dynamics, and asymmetric tradeoffs in training modules.
  • Embed Ukrainian veterans, doctrine developers, or tech teams as mentors/advisors to Taiwanese and U.S. Pacific innovators.
  • Conduct joint wargames and table-top exercises that simulate PLA cross-strait invasion efforts with Ukrainian-style swarm + hybrid warfare tactics.

Strategic Benefits & Risks

Benefits

  • Accelerated capability deployment — Taiwan can leapfrog years of R&D by inheriting battle-tested systems and concepts.
  • Deterrence through cost imposition — a PLA invasion would face more unpredictable, higher-risk consequences.
  • Resilience under attack — distributed systems improve survivability under missile duels, cyber or EW strain, and degradation.
  • Learning across theaters — U.S. strategies refined in Ukraine can inform Pacific posture, and vice versa, creating cross-pollination of tactics.

Risks & Challenges

  • Technology transfer sensitivities — export controls, classification, and third-party concerns may limit how much can be shared.
  • Contextual mismatch — Pacific geography, oceanic distances, and adversarial dispositions differ from Ukraine; indiscriminate transfer may fail without adaptation.
  • Overdependence on imports — Taiwan must build indigenous capacity and avoid being locked into external supply chains that could be disrupted in crisis.
  • Cyber, EW, and counter-adaptation — PLA may develop countermeasures; constant innovation will be required to stay ahead.

Stakeholder Roles

  • INDOPACOM can serve as the integrator of tech transfer strategy and operational alignment, ensuring that theater-level concepts and Taiwan’s efforts cohere.
  • U.S. defense agencies and labs can lead development of shared modules, autonomy stacks, EW packages, and ordnance kits for dual-use across theaters.
  • Defense industrial base partners can be contracted to build scalable versions of drone platforms, modular C2 kits, resilient comms systems tailored for Indo-Pacific environments (humidity, salt, long ranges).
  • Veloxxity can contribute by:
    1. Adapting AI/ML models from Ukraine to Indo-Pacific sensor, drone, and ISR data pipelines.
    2. Building prototype autonomy modules, mission planning tools, networked drone orchestration suited for Taiwan.
    3. Facilitating knowledge transfer, mentorship, and cross-domain integration (intelligence, telecommunications, operations) for U.S.–Taiwan collaboration.

Taiwan’s porcupine strategy is not just a defense posture — it is a bet on leveraging agility, dispersion, adaptability, and technology to deter aggression. Ukraine’s high-intensity conflict offers a living laboratory of distributed warfare, drone-based attrition, and resilience-oriented systems.

By judiciously transferring technology, doctrine, logistics, and analytic lessons from Ukraine to INDOPACOM and Taiwan — while ensuring local adaptation and capacity building — the U.S. can help turn Taiwan into a far more unwelcoming target.