Taiwan's $39 Billion Defense Plan Targets China's 2035 Military Threat
Taiwan's Executive Yuan approved a draft special budget law in November 2025, allocating an additional NT$1.25 trillion ($39 billion) towards the country's defense spending from 2026 to 2033. The money is intended to fund domestic production or purchases from foreign militaries of missiles, missile defense systems, drones, and counter-drone defenses.
Shortly after the Executive Yuan submitted the draft legislation to the Legislative Yuan, the U.S. Defense Department announced an $11.1 billion arms package in mid-December, including missiles and drones.
Despite questions about the massive expense, the special budget does address critical gaps in Taiwan's defense network.
While concerns remain about overly optimistic timelines and complex system integration challenges, the proposed defense improvements, such as the much-touted "Taiwan Shield" and enhanced long-range precision strike capabilities, would significantly boost Taiwan's military readiness against projected Chinese threats by 2035.
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China's Joint Fire Strike Operations by 2035
By 2035, China's potential military campaign against Taiwan would feature joint fire capabilities combining traditional ballistic and cruise missiles with long-range rockets and AI-assisted swarm drones. This would dramatically increase the overall firepower, efficiency, and ability to repel a first-wave strike compared to current levels.
Long-range rockets capable of cross-strait precision strikes would not only double first-wave firepower but also enable a more efficient division of labor. Chinese forces could use these rockets against large targeted areas on Taiwan's western coast—including airfield runways, ports, and mobile air defense, anti-ship, and cruise missile positions—while reserving higher-precision ballistic and cruise missiles for attacking critical nodes in Taiwan's C5ISR networks, aiming to severely damage or paralyze command and control capabilities within the first few waves.
Swarm drones pose an equally serious threat. While individually less destructive than ballistic or cruise missiles, their massive numbers and AI-assisted maneuvers would significantly complicate efforts by the defense. These systems could identify and destroy critical infrastructure components, rendering high-value weapon systems useless. For instance, if Chinese suicide drones successfully identify and destroy a Patriot missile battery's control station or phased array radar, the entire air defense unit's combat effectiveness would drop, even if missile launchers remain intact.
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By 2035, additional aircraft carriers entering service would strengthen Chinese joint strike capabilities through carrier battle groups deployed in the Western Pacific. Type 055 destroyers operating beyond the range of Taiwan's land-based anti-ship missiles could strike Taiwan's navy vessels in eastern waters, seeking to rapidly eliminate or neutralize Taiwan's air and naval forces in the opening salvos.
The planned deployment of numerous mobile missile and radar systems creates a new challenge: these systems typically require multiple large vehicles and need substantial space and good transportation infrastructure for survivability. Taiwan's western regions—densely populated and highly urbanized—may lack sufficient suitable locations for force preservation, especially considering the hundreds of shore-based Harpoon missile systems alone from U.S. arms sales.
The situation becomes more complicated as Washington, while approving enhanced cross-strait strike capabilities, remains cautious about preemptive strikes against southeastern Chinese coastal military targets when invasion indicators become clear.
The Taiwan Shield's Function
Based on available information, the Taiwan Shield comprises two main components. First, it would acquire cost-effective defensive weapon systems targeting Chinese long-range rockets and future swarm drones, allowing Taiwan's current defense systems to focus exclusively on intercepting Chinese missiles and aircraft without competing priorities.
The Taiwan Shield's second and most crucial function involves integrating U.S. and domestically made air defense systems, enabling any fire control radar and engagement control station to command all air defense missiles within range. This prevents scenarios where damage to a missile battery's fire control radar or engagement control station renders that unit unable to engage targets, maximizing each defensive system's effectiveness.
A highly integrated Taiwan Shield, enhanced with mature artificial intelligence, could rapidly prioritize engagement sequences based on threat levels, instantly distributing commands and precise target information to the most suitable missiles, guns, and counter-drone systems for engaging specific targets. This would compress combat reaction times to near real-time response, dramatically improving speed and efficiency.
Remaining Concerns
The Defense Ministry should consider prioritizing integration of U.S. sensor systems with U.S. air defense missile systems, since the U.S. military began this process years ago and has nearly completed it, making integration timelines and costs more manageable while quickly elevating joint air defense capabilities to adequate levels.
In addition, delays should be expected. Whether all M142 systems and accompanying ammunition can be delivered by the end of 2033 is highly questionable. The U.S. defense industry has its own constraints, with Ukraine and other NATO countries at least nominally ahead of Taiwan in priority.
Estonia spent $600 million on six M142 systems in 2022, with delivery completed only in early 2025. The country's planned second batch faced such extended delivery times due to surging global demand that Estonia decided to purchase South Korean K239 multiple rocket systems instead—a telling precedent.
*The author is an adjunct assistant professor at Tamkang University's Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies
