A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, by contrast, could play out in just a single day as Beijing’s massed fleet steams across the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait and lands potentially tens of thousands of troops on Taiwanese beaches. Taiwanese USVs might get just one shot at the attacking Chinese.
It shouldn’t be too difficult for Taipei, with its extensive high-tech industry, to scale up its prospective robotic fleet. The California think-tank RAND estimated Taiwan could buy 1,000 USVs for a little over one percent of the $20 billion the country spends annually for defense.
And then there are the Americans. In the era of Donald Trump and his isolationist – or, worse, pro-authoritarian – movement, no country can just assume the United States will fight on its behalf. Consider that a handful of Trump-aligned Republican lawmakers have, for six months…
