US plans to turn Taiwan Strait into ‘unmanned hellscape’ if China invades: top admiral
- US has plans to deploy thousands of lethal drones if mainland China invades Taiwan, said the commander of US Navy’s Pacific Fleet
If mainland China invades Taiwan, it may face a large, lethal drone force meant to make its military “miserable”.
At least that’s the plan, according to the top US admiral in the Pacific, who said the “hellscape” strategy is designed to distract China and buy the United States time to respond.
“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, told The Washington Post at the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Shangri-La Dialogue Summit.
In doing so, he said: “I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.”
The plan involves launching thousands of unmanned systems, from surface vessels and submarines to aerial drones, to fight Chinese invading forces as soon as they begin to cross the Taiwan Strait, effectively acting as a kind of first line of defence.
This type of strategy would require heavy investments in cheap, reliable drones, which the US has been doing with its Replicator initiative. Last year, the Department of Defence officially announced the program, which is a long-term plan to field thousands of autonomous systems.