To Prepare for War at Sea Over Taiwan, Look to the Land War in Ukraine​

By Samuel Byers | Samuel Byers

With a few notable exceptions—including the sinking of the Russian flagship Moskva and Ukraine’s innovative drone attacks on the Black Sea Fleet—the Russo-Ukraine War has been confined to land and the skies there above. However, navalists would be foolish not to study this conflict in all domains as they wrestle with how the United States should prepare for a crisis over the most critical hotspot in the world today: Taiwan.

We are unlikely to see another example of a large-scale war before the “Davidson Window” closes in 2027. Even if the People’s Republic of China (PRC) does not attack Taiwan this decade, the war in Ukraine provides an invaluable case study of warfare under modern conditions, exposing erroneous assumptions in American defense planning about logistics, defense production, and the duration of conflicts that will hamper the ability of American naval forces to respond to a crisis over Taiwan or elsewhere.

Logistics is (Still) King

For fifteen months, Russia’s logistical ineptitude—and Ukraine’s skillful exploitation of this “Achilles’ heel”—has hampered Moscow’s advantages in numbers and firepower, allowing Kyiv to seize the initiative on the battlefield. Images of a miles-long convoy-cum-traffic-jam from Belarus to Kyiv marked the early days of the war. More recently, Ukraine’s destruction of the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland sharply restricted ground lines of communication through the peninsula, curtailing Moscow’s ability to project power along the southern front. Targeted Ukrainian strikes on vulnerable supply depots and trucks have blunted the advance of Russian tanks, artillery, and armored vehicles.

Russia’s difficulties supplying an offensive mere dozens of miles from its national border pale in comparison to the challenges posed by the vast distances of the Pacific Ocean. While the “stopping power of water” is commonly invoked in Taiwan’s favor when assessing the feasibility of an amphibious invasion, that knife cuts both ways. Aside from forces based in the western Pacific, reinforcements and additional supplies face a minimum 10 day transit from Pearl Harbor and even longer from the continental United States. Even making the dangerous assumption that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) would not or could not interdict American logistics, substantial portions of the U.S. Navy’s battle and logistics forces would be swallowed up in transit at any one time. Capacity is further constrained by the fact that the Navy does not currently have the capability to reload vertically-launched missile systems at sea, necessitating long voyages back to port to reload once a ship’s weapons are expended in combat.

The Ukraine war underscores the inherent vulnerability of relying on tenuous and outdated logistics infrastructure. The Pacific’s vast distances are surmountable with proper tools. However, the Pentagon has grown accustomed to the luxury of uncontested logistics and has allowed America’s sealift fleet to atrophy to a dangerous degree. Meanwhile, China and Russia have developed methods of striking American logistics which, the Center for a New American Security argues, “present a grave danger to the [Defense Department’s] ability to uphold U.S. security commitments in East Asia.” The paucity of American sealift capabilities amounts to what former senior Navy official Seth Cropsey calls America’s own “Achilles’ heel in the Indo-Pacific region.” Without remedying this gross deficiency, Washington cannot hope to successfully defend Taiwan.

We Will Run Out of Ammo

Since the beginning of the war, both sides have burned through ammunition faster than they can replace it, especially when it comes to high-end systems like long-range, precision missiles. Despite drawing from a vast reserve of materiel laid up over decades, Russia has had to turn to North Korea to replenish its rockets and artillery shells and to Iran for attack drones. Meanwhile, Kyiv has benefitted from tens-of-billions of dollars of military equipment provided by the United States, NATO, and other countries, although Ukraine remains heavily outgunned by Russia.

Although transfers to Ukraine represent a relatively small percentage of U.S. weapons arsenals, low production rates mean it will take years to reconstitute the inventory of key systems. A recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded, “[t]he war in Ukraine has exposed serious deficiencies in [the ability of] the U.S. defense industrial base” to support American forces in a protracted war. The same report also determined that “the United States would likely run out of some munitions—such as long-range, precision-guided munitions—in less than one week in a Taiwan Strait conflict.” While ground forces in Ukraine can fall back on more abundant tube artillery for firepower, it is difficult to imagine any commander dispatching Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to engage PLAN capital ships with five-inch gunfire once the Harpoon missiles give out.

As with logistics, decades of peacetime procurement and restrained military spending have allowed the defense industrial base to atrophy to a dangerous degree. Absent substantial changes, the American arsenal of missiles and other weapons with long production lead times could quickly run short in a shooting war over Taiwan, severely limiting U.S. options. Fortunately, aid to Ukraine has catalyzed a major expansion of key production lines, including for weapons like the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile and the Joint Air-to-Surface Missile which would likely play a critical role in a Taiwan conflict. It is incumbent on Navy and Department of Defense leadership to ensure that sufficient resources are allocated to expanding production of weapons relevant to a Taiwan conflict, not just those being sent to arm Ukraine.

Wars Last Longer Than War Games

Russian president Vladimir Putin intended his invasion to last a matter of days. Western analysts predicted the fall of Kyiv within days; members of Congress contemplated arming insurgents in occupied Ukraine. Yet well into its second year, the war continues with no end in sight, as both sides struggle to gain a decisive advantage.

Analysts run a similar risk when they fixate on the opening days and weeks of a Taiwan conflict. Most analyses and war games examine whether and how the United States should respond immediately to a crisis, obviating the possibility that we may have to fight a long war. The most recent comprehensive, open-source operational-level simulation of a PRC invasion of Taiwan only covered the first three weeks of fighting before adjudicating victory. The recent war game for the House China Select Committee highlighted that a conflict could spark an enduring global economic crisis—but before this could be fully examined, the game ended due to time constraints.

The D.C. policy community has yet to seriously grapple with what a long war, lasting months or even years, would look like. At a minimum, it would greatly compound the logistical and ammunition production challenges discussed above. Navalists must take the lead in rectifying this omission, if for no other reason than the fact maritime forces take a long time to build and repair. With the maritime industrial base stretched even thinner than the rest of the defense industry, losses from a pyrrhic victory in the Taiwan Strait could take years to reconstitute. Investments need to be made now to ensure that U.S. naval forces have the capacity to prevail in a long-term conflict.

The Russo-Ukraine War’s lessons cross domains and expose shortcomings in America’s defense planning and strategic mindset that undermine the ability of our naval forces to successfully intervene in a Taiwan crisis. Navalists must study the ongoing land war as they prepare for a sea fight in the Western Pacific.

Samuel Byers is a Research Associate at the Vandenberg Coalition. He previously served for two years in the Pentagon on the staff of the Secretary of the Navy. He holds an MA with distinction from the War Studies Department at King’s College London, where his dissertation research examined the politics behind American naval expansion in the late nineteenth century.

The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.