Taiwan’s best military strategy for deterring a Chinese invasion is one that relies on asymmetric defense to prevail in two critical operations: surviving a conventional strike campaign and denying amphibious forces from establishing a beachhead or capturing a logistics hub like a port.

An asymmetric defense strategy, also called a “porcupine” strategy, uses large numbers of smaller, less complex capabilities to counter a stronger opponent instead of matching them system-for-system. For example, when facing a large navy, an asymmetric defense strategy would lean on ground-based missiles and unmanned air and watercraft instead of building larger ships.

Focusing Taiwan’s self-defense posture on asymmetric defense is a change from Taiwan’s current approach, which tries to walk a middle path between asymmetric capabilities and traditional military capabilities like manned fighter aircraft and large warships. Taiwan wants to have a flexible military that it can use to respond to a wide variety of threats. Arguments favoring flexibility emphasize that China is likely to pursue coercive pressure tactics against Taiwan, which traditional capabilities are better at countering.

Continuing to pursue flexibility, however, carries real risks for Taiwan. Traditional military capabilities are generally more expensive to acquire and maintain than asymmetric ones, and Taiwan — despite a recent spending uptick — has chronically underspent on defense. This creates significant tradeoffs between traditional and asymmetric capabilities. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is also well-equipped to target and destroy Taiwan’s traditional capabilities and the logistics facilities that support them. Without prioritization, Taipei risks fielding a military that is poorly prepared to do many things instead of doing one thing well.

Taiwan should prioritize asymmetric defense because it is the strategy that can best offset the PLA’s advantages. Mobile anti-ship and anti-air capabilities with large stockpiles of munitions are the most critical kinds of capabilities for Taiwan to build up. Unmanned vehicles of all ranges and sizes, especially those that can be operated with a small logistics footprint, are essential for conducting battlefield reconnaissance and attacking ground forces.

Operationally, Taiwan needs to use these asymmetric capabilities to survive against a Chinese conventional strike campaign and deny the PLA’s ground forces a lodgment on the island. Prevailing in these two operations is essential for Taiwan’s defense for three reasons. First, Taiwan will likely be fighting these operations alone even in the event of rapid US military intervention. Second, Taiwan’s current, flexible military posture is not optimized to prevail in these operations. Third, success or failure in these operations could prove decisive to the entire conflict.

The United States should use its considerable leverage as Taiwan’s primary source of military aid to push Taipei toward asymmetric defense. Washington should only sell Taiwan asymmetric capabilities from this point forward and support Taiwan’s defense industrial base so it can manufacture more US-designed weapons and avoid long wait times for US-made weapons. The United States should also assure China that arms sales are limited to improving asymmetric defense and avoid actions that stoke Beijing’s ire but do nothing to help Taiwan. This mix of security assistance and assurances is essential for buying Taiwan the time it needs to fully implement the asymmetric defense strategy.