The People’s Liberation Army is increasingly embracing broader “systems-oriented warfare” rather than relying on individual weapons platforms – a shift Taiwanese analysts say could pose new challenges to the island’s defences.
Instead of focusing on individual weapons, the PLA has progressively emphasised integrating intelligence, AI, communications, weapons, logistics and infrastructure into an overall combat system, they warn.
“The PLA is no longer concerned only with whose weapons are stronger, but with who can connect different weapons to generate greater overall combat power,” said Chen Chia-sheng, a researcher at a government-funded think tank in Taipei.
In an article published last week by his organisation, the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, Chen wrote that for Taiwan, this meant the threat in a cross-strait conflict could extend well beyond attacks on its fighters, warships and missile batteries.
Under what the PLA calls “systems destruction warfare”, Beijing could seek to disable critical nodes supporting Taiwanese forces, including satellites, radar, communications links, command centres, data networks and fuel and logistics facilities, he wrote.
Once those links were severed, even sophisticated weapons could rapidly lose their effectiveness without being physically destroyed, he added.