On August 20, 2024 Taiwan opened a rare window into a sensitive test range at Jiupeng, firing an array of surface-to-air systems and demonstrating precision missile drills in front of the media. The Defence Ministry highlighted Patriot and domestically produced Sky Bow III launches, and local reporting noted the base is where longer range, indigenous strike systems are developed and tested.
The publicity around Jiupeng was not a vanity exercise. It served two strategic purposes at once: to reassure domestic audiences that Taiwan can defend its skies and to telegraph credible, survivable strike options to any planner in Beijing weighing coercive measures. Demonstrations that show systems can hit designated targets and that crews are proficient strengthen deterrence by increasing uncertainty about timing and cost should an attack be contemplated.
Those live-fire displays sit inside a larger, deliberate shift toward an asymmetric posture that Taiwan has pursued for several years under concepts such as the Overall Defense Concept and the so-called porcupine strategy. Rather than attempting parity with the People’s Liberation Army, Taipei’s logic emphasizes mobile, dispersed, and relatively low-cost strike systems that can impose unacceptable losses on an invader and complicate Beijing’s operational plans. Analysts and policy papers have repeatedly argued that asymmetric tools are the most cost-effective way for Taiwan to alter the cross-strait calculus.
Missiles are central to that logic for practical reasons. Land-based cruise and anti-ship missiles provide reach into the approaches an invading amphibious force or carrier battle group would use, and mobile transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) are harder to neutralize than fixed batteries. By prioritizing massed salvos, distributed launchers, and rapid shoot-and-scoot tactics, Taiwan seeks to degrade an attacker’s ability to secure sea lines of approach and to buy time for mobilization and allied response. Public reporting about activity at Jiupeng underscores the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology’s role in iterating missile designs and the military’s interest in integrating these systems into a layered defense.
That said, missiles alone do not guarantee deterrence. Technical and operational limits matter. Subsonic cruise missiles can be vulnerable to layered air defenses and electronic warfare; extended range variants raise political sensitivities because strikes into the Chinese interior are perceived in Beijing as crossing an escalatory threshold. Taiwan’s planners therefore balance investment in survivability, sensors and resilient command and control with the political reality that some capabilities can sharpen perceptions of first-strike intent. The strategic trade-off is clear: the more Taiwan can credibly threaten denial of a quick and cheap victory to an adversary, the stronger its deterrent; yet the more Taiwan’s posture looks like a mainland strike capability, the greater the risk of accelerating escalation in crisis.
Washington’s legislative and policy posture has reinforced Taipei’s asymmetric turn. Recent US statutes and public guidance emphasize supporting Taiwanese acquisitions that strengthen anti-access and area denial, maritime and air domain awareness, and resilient command and control rather than encouraging symmetrical force growth. That legal and policy environment shapes the kinds of systems the United States is willing to facilitate and frames Taipei’s military-industrial choices.
Operationally the most valuable features for Taiwan will be industrial throughput, survivable basing, and C4ISR integration. Rapid production lines and stockpiles allow Taipei to execute saturation tactics; mobile basing complicates PLA targeting; and hardened, redundant communications and sensor links preserve the kill-chain under duress. Public drills that verify the training of crews and the performance of integrated systems contribute to all three. But these are long lead tasks that require steady budgets, hardened logistics, and realistic exercises across the reserve and mobilization systems.
Risks and counters must be acknowledged. The PLA continues to expand its long-range strike, precision ISR, and preemption capabilities. Beijing’s investments in real-time targeting, stand-off suppression, and integrated air defenses mean that Taiwan’s TELs and missile stockpiles will face intense pressure in a conflict’s opening hours. Countering those trends requires Taipei to invest in deception, decoys, passive protection, and survivable dispersal as much as in additional airframes or missile rounds. Equally important is planning for the economic and political ramifications that come when cross-strait strikes extend beyond maritime targets.
For policy-makers in Taipei and allied capitals the implication is straightforward but politically uneasy: asymmetric deterrence is necessary but incomplete. Taiwan should accelerate the resilient elements that increase missile survivability and operational tempo—mobile basing, hardened and redundant C4ISR, and deeper stockpiles—while calibrating range and mission sets in ways that preserve signaling space for de-escalation. Allies should match technical assistance with clearer crisis planning and practical cooperation that helps Taiwan enact the Overall Defense Concept in peacetime and crisis. At the same time, all sides should avoid reward structures that encourage missile expansions without parallel investments in resilience, training, and command survivability.
Missile tests like the Jiupeng demonstration are therefore a snapshot of a broader strategic trajectory. They show that Taipei is investing in asymmetric levers meant to raise the costs of coercion and invasion. Over the long run, deterrence will hinge less on any single system and more on how those systems are produced, dispersed, networked and supported by allied planning. Taiwan’s missiles reshape the immediate operational picture. But they will only become a durable deterrent if embedded in resilient architecture and matched by sober crisis management that narrows the pathways to catastrophic escalation.