What Taiwan can learn from Ukraine’s drone playbook

[EUROPE] In early 2024, Ukrainian forces stunned the world with a campaign deep inside Russian territory that destroyed multiple military aircraft using nothing more than modified commercial drones and local couriers. The operation—code-named Spider’s Web—didn’t rely on air superiority, long-range missiles, or stealth fighters. Instead, it exploited imagination, decentralization, and denial. “It was a wake-up moment,” said US Air Force Chief of Staff David Allvin, and not just for Europe. For Taiwan, which faces the shadow of a possible invasion from China, Ukraine’s tactics offer a new model of defense: one where strategic improvisation may outweigh conventional firepower.

Context: A Different Kind of Reach

Ukraine’s Spider’s Web drone operations delivered precise, high-impact strikes on Russian airbases located up to 1,000 kilometers from the frontline. By covertly transporting drones in containers through Russia itself—often using unsuspecting civilians as drivers—the Ukrainians bypassed traditional battlefield constraints and made Moscow’s interior feel vulnerable for the first time in the war. The drones were launched remotely, targeting high-value assets like surveillance aircraft and long-range bombers stationed on open tarmacs.

While the destruction was tactical, the psychological impact was strategic. As retired US Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges noted, “They’ve shown how to weaponize a sense of insecurity across a nation’s territory.” Crucially, Ukraine pulled this off without air superiority, without strategic bombers, and without a functioning navy. In asymmetric warfare, that’s the playbook Taiwan must now study.

The People’s Republic of China maintains a military budget more than 15 times larger than Taiwan’s and controls advanced air, missile, and naval forces. In any cross-strait conflict, Taiwan is unlikely to match China system for system. But Ukraine’s example suggests it may not need to.

Strategic Comparison: Drones over Doctrine

Western defense orthodoxy has long focused on conventional deterrence—buying tanks, jets, and ships to match an adversary’s firepower. Taiwan, however, may be better served by embracing strategic asymmetry. Ukraine’s success wasn’t due to technological advantage but to creativity and fragmentation. It weaponized civilian infrastructure, commercial tech, and distributed command.

By contrast, China’s doctrine remains heavily centralized. It relies on large, coordinated movements that require logistical predictability and rigid command. A “Spider’s Web” strategy could exploit this rigidity. Imagine drones pre-positioned in urban environments across Taiwan or even smuggled into mainland China, activated at key moments.

The comparison also undermines the notion that without US boots on the ground or dominance in the air, Taiwan would be defenseless. The better question is whether Taiwan can make itself unpredictable and ungovernable in the early days of conflict. Former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby has warned, “Deterrence doesn’t have to mean guaranteed victory. It has to mean unacceptable cost.” Spider’s Web imposed exactly that.

Implication: Redefining Deterrence in the Taiwan Strait

For Taiwanese defense planners—and for US Indo-Pacific Command—the key lesson is that deterrence in the 2020s may look more like disruption than domination. Investment should shift from major weapons platforms toward modular, mobile, deniable systems: drone swarms, cyber operations, anti-ship missiles hidden in civilian trucks.

This isn’t theoretical. Taiwan’s current defense spending allocates less than 5% to irregular warfare and unmanned systems, despite having a booming commercial drone industry. Meanwhile, China’s military planning remains optimized for overwhelming force in a conventional sense—missile barrages, amphibious landings, cyber paralysis. The more Taiwan can counter this with unpredictability, the more it shifts the strategic calculus.

The risk for US and allied planners is assuming that defense assistance must mirror traditional military aid. Ukraine is showing a different path. What’s missing in the Taiwan Strait is not just firepower—but strategic imagination.

Our Viewpoint

Spider’s Web is more than a battlefield innovation; it’s a strategic doctrine built for weaker actors facing overwhelming force. Taiwan, and those who support its sovereignty, must internalize this shift. Future conflicts will reward improvisation, not symmetry.

Conventional deterrence alone will not protect Taiwan. But a distributed, deniable, and disruptive strategy—modeled on Ukraine’s boldest operations—might. The West should stop equating deterrence with dominance and start funding the kind of asymmetric tactics that can actually work when the skies are not friendly.