Category: 2020

Credit: Office of the President, ROC (Taiwan)Advertisement

The Taiwan army major traced his finger in a swooping arc across the map. “The extended distances that UAVs can now cover means that everything is now a target. How do we defend against this?” He then looked expectantly out at our delegation.

One of our delegation members stood up, with a smile that would have done credit to a shark. “A good question, but allow me to submit that first, your adversary can already target you without the use of UAVs. Second, UAVs are an asymmetric weapon. Your adversary is coming to you — make them worry about how to defend against your UAVs.”

That stirred up an audible reaction. During the break afterwards, the major sought me out. “Is that person a fire-eater, or what?” — with a nod and a smile, inviting me to agree. “No, she’s being realistic,” I replied. “Things are getting to the point where not being a ‘fire-eater’ is the risky option.” The major looked at me, bemused (and probably wondering if the entire U.S. delegation would be dining on flames for lunch).

However, the recently concluded Armenia-Azerbaijan War has been fairly conclusive proof about the advisability of my colleague’s recommendations. From the various after-action reports coming from the conflict, I identify three primary lessons for the Taiwan military.

However, the first and most obvious lesson of the Armenia-Azerbaijan war is that through massed unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), it is possible for ground forces to cheaply replicate elements of a robust air force at a localized level.

As demonstration of this, the Azerbaijanis used loitering munitions (kamikaze drones), medium-strike UAS with guided munitions, and recon UAS in concert with artillery, to devastating effect. Against an entrenched opponent, the strikes decimated the fixed command posts, logistics centers, and assembly areas, badly weakening Armenian defenses. Reinforcing heavy armor received the same treatment, only worse; caught out in the open, with predictable lines of advance, some 240 tanks were destroyed or captured. The destruction of Armenian armor and mechanized forces was crucial in allowing light Azerbaijani special operation forces with artillery support to capture the mountainous defensive point of Shusha, which effectively ended the war.

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In the case of a successful landing of the PLA on Taiwan, Taiwan would be on the strategic defensive. Given expected PLA Air Force air superiority, small radar-evading UAS may mean the difference between the Taiwan army being forced to remain in an operationally defensive role or having the ability to take the offensive during a period of high vulnerability for the PLA. The PLA, like the Armenians, would be fixed in place while desperately bringing up enough logistical capability to go on the offensive – which would then be on predictable lines of advance to Taipei. This would actually be a worse scenario than having the initial invasion armada destroyed at sea, because a partial but inadequate landing force would not be able to easily retreat, would continue to be a massive resource sink for the PLA, and would essentially be a marooned hostage if the U.S. Air Force and Navy destroyed resupply capability.

Unleash the Decoy Ducks

One of the greatest advantages the PLA holds over the Taiwan military is the ability to conduct precision missile saturation. The vast proliferation over the last decade of accurate land-attack cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles have made the PLA Rocket Force the “largest and most diverse missile force in the world,” now better integrated into PLA theater operations than ever.

Previously, the Second Artillery (now PLA Rocket Force, PLARF) development of short range ballistic missiles was meant as a counter to the expected qualitative advantage of Taiwan’s Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) platforms and training; as late as the 1996-2000 time period, most analysts still predicted ROCAF air superiority over the PLAAF in an invasion scenario. However, in a demonstration of the rapid evolution and growth of PLA capabilities, the main focus of the PLARF is no longer on developing short-range missiles to counter Taiwan defense, but instead developing medium- to long-range hypersonics to counter and deter U.S. intervention.

Herein lies another opportunity demonstrated by the Armenia-Azerbaijan War. Azerbaijan used a significant number of “unmanned” AN-2 biplanes as decoys to locate Armenian air defense and artillery. These decoys were quite low-tech: the pilots simply aimed at the cheap biplanes at Armenian lines, strapped the controls with belts to maintain course, and bailed out. Paired with strike UAS, this proved to be an extremely cost-effective method of revealing and then targeting an enemy air defense.

Similarly, the Taiwan military could massively expand a cheap decoy fleet, with a main mission of complicating adversary targeting calculus and forcing missile expenditure. This could be a mix of UAS, biplanes, even aging fighters: Taiwan is in the process of phasing out its existing F-5s, which could instead be repurposed as missile bait. In the hands of a more technically sophisticated power than Azerbaijan, unmanned decoys could spoof attacks not just against an invasion force, but against targets in China – thus forcing ever-increasing PLA expenditures on base-hardening, missile/UAS defense, and raising the specter among Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership that the consequences of a Taiwan war cannot be isolated.

Don’t Fight Like They Expect You to Fight

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Prior to the development of the ODC, Taiwan strategy focused on creating a defense-in-depth system where each service fought its own war: the ROC Marine Corps would defend the outer-lying islands until overwhelmed; the ROC Navy would fight in the Taiwan Strait until overwhelmed; the ROC Army would conduct anti-landing operations; the ROC Air Force would seek to absorb the initial PLAAF and PLARF strikes in mountain bases such as Chiashan and then come out to fight. This plan was essentially static for over 40 years, and completely predictable – particularly after many of the operational details were stolen via Chinese intelligence operations.

The issue of predictability was not limited to operations. With the United States as Taiwan’s main equipment supplier, the Taiwan military also picked up many of the habits of the U.S. military – not just the way the U.S. fights, but also the service cultures and rivalries regarding funding and acquisitions that incentivized buying high-end platforms. While there has been a veritable plethora of articles recommending the Taiwan military shift from high-end platforms to asymmetric weaponry, there has been considerably less attention on the utility of thinking differently about fighting.

For the Armenians, this proved to be fatal. While there was some understanding prior to the outbreak of war that a static “trench defense” was precisely what the Azerbaijanis were prepared to fight against, the slow rate of change meant that Armenia ended up with a flood of volunteers trained by veterans of the 1994 war with wooden guns to execute trench defense. These forces were then correspondingly demoralized by a way of war that had nothing to do with the old Soviet firepower-attrition method that gave Armenia the victory in 1994. The Armenians were fixed and then destroyed – not just in position, but mentally as well.

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In Taiwan’s case, this lesson calls for a military able to consider multiple ways of war past the U.S. model, which is expeditionary, air-centric, mobile – and backed up by a massive resource/manpower base. The U.S. model addresses problems that Taiwan does not need to worry about, with a base that Taiwan does not have. Moreover, not being fixated on one operating model means having greater mental flexibility to take lessons from multiple ways of war. For instance, Finland, Sweden, and Singapore all have some similarities to Taiwan’s defense situation, both in terms of equipment and threat; another model, particularly for Taiwan reserve units, would be to implement lessons learned from the U.S. experience of 20 years of counterinsurgency — specifically from the operating methods and skillsets of the insurgents.

An Arsenal of Ideas

A number of years ago, during one of the cyclical downturns in U.S.-China relations, Beijing reached to one of its standard ways of expressing displeasure: cutting off military-to-military relations with the U.S. I fielded a call from an irate war college professor, who wanted to confirm if it was true that the China regional studies trip he had been planning all year long was dead in the water.

I regretfully confirmed the facts of life, but tried to cheer him up: “Your class can learn quite a bit in Taiwan, you know.” There was a slight pause on the other end. “Yes, but… we’d just be seeing a lot of old 1980s U.S. equipment.” (I wanted to point out that any trip to China would have just involved seeing a lot of old 1980s PLA equipment, but I held back from the smart remark.)

I remembered this exchange in the present day when reading the after-action reports of the Armenia-Azerbaijan War. Azerbaijan used a mix of modern (but hardly cutting edge) and old systems in innovative ways, cleverly turning an assessed Armenian strength – fortified defenses – into a deadly weakness. More important than equipment is the thinking behind the use of the equipment.

It’s true that China is certainly no Armenia, but on the other hand, Taiwan is also significantly stronger economically than Azerbaijan: Taiwan’s GDP is some 14 times larger than that of Azerbaijan’s, and it is much more technologically sophisticated, to boot. Taiwan has recently demonstrated an impressive ability to wield organization and technology – a veritable Arsenal of Ideas – to defeat a wide range of adversaries, from COVID-19 to Beijing’s disinformation campaigns. The key to Taiwan’s survival will be to constantly experiment, using this Arsenal of Ideas to offset an adversary with far greater firepower. Therein lies the final lesson of Armenia-Azerbaijan War, encapsulated in the old British Special Air Service motto: “Who Dares, Wins.”

Eric Chan is a specialist in Chinese/Korean political and security affairs, working as a China/Korea advisor for the U.S. Air Force’s Checkmate office. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s alone and do not represent the views of his employer.

The protesting by the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regime against Greece’s so-called violations of religious freedoms because of the racist slogans written against Turks in the elevator of the apartment building where the Pomak (Bulgarian Muslim) pseudo-mufti Ahmet Mete lives in Thrace, goes beyond that.

This is because in contrast to Greece, where the rights of Muslims are fully respected (the mosque that was recently built in Athens was funded by the Greek State), the rights of religious minorities in Turkey are a bad tasting anecdote.

The Turkish Constitution indeed proclaims religious freedom, allowing free conduct of religious ceremonies if they do not turn against the integrity of the State.

But the notion of respect for religious freedom in the Turkish conscience is, in practice, an interpretation of religious tolerance as their Ottoman ancestors once understood – the supremacy of Islam is taken for granted.

In their view, Muslims have primacy and can impose their conditions on non-Muslims, while the use of violence (physical or psychological, direct or indirect) is not excluded, which is why unspeakable savagery often occurs against religious minorities in Turkey.

It is an indisputable historical fact that the non-Muslim element in Turkey has always been under informal persecution, which is why non-Muslims are now only 0.4% of the total Turkish population!

A typical example is the Greek Orthodox community, which during the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923 numbered 200,000 people, but today is only 1,800 because the Turkish state engaged in a systematic campaign of extermination and expulsion of Greeks for decades. They used heavy taxation, confiscated estates, and banned the teaching of the Greek language.

No one can and should not forget the barbaric and heinous pogrom of September 1955 committed by the Turks, which was the culmination of all the persecutions against the Greek minority.

Even today, however, not much seems to have changed in the Turks policy against religious minorities.

According to the 2019 US Report on Religious Freedom in Turkey, a report that collected data from various organizations (such as the Middle East Concern, International Christian Concern, World Watch Monitor and others), found that Ankara deported Christians, especially Protestants, as well as banned or refused to extend their residence permits in Turkey.

In addition, the Turkish government has serious restrictions on the education of Christian clergy in Turkey, especially since the Theological School of Halki closed in 1971. Instead of reopening the theological school, the government has announced the creation of an Islamic Training Center on the island.

The Turks deliberately ensure that the required legal framework for non-Muslim institutions is not adopted so that their committees cannot hold elections. This is so that over time they lose their ability to manage the property and then the Turkish state can acquire it.

The 2019 Report also includes a large number of reports of vandalism, graffiti and threatening messages against Christians and Jews, as well as posters of religious hatred sweeping the Turks consciousness, especially in the east.

Add to this the desecration of Christian churches, the conversion of world-class Christian monuments into mosques like Hagia Sophia, and the establishment of a completely Islam-oriented education system.

Turks praying in Hagia Sophia.

In light of all the above, the recent invitation of Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül to representatives of non-Muslim religious minorities to meet in Dolmabahçe Palace to discuss their problems can only be considered as a pretext.

He is, after all, the same person who spoke in July about the legal need to change the status of Hagia Sophia and turn it into a mosque… so much respect, that is, to other religions!

With their country a global tail in respect for human rights and in view of the summit of European leaders later this month and the coming of the Democrats in the White House in January, the Turks once again put on their carnival mask.

The carnival marks are not for protection against COVID-19, but to pretend they are advanced and Europeanized in the eyes of the international community, skillfully hiding all their dark middle ages actions.

The views of the author do not necessarily reflect those of Greek City Times.

Vassilis Skoularakos is a regular contributor to News Bomb.