Taiwan's procurement of unmanned vessels has been described as misdirected, betting too heavily on one-way suicide drone boats that do almost nothing to address China's day-to-day gray-zone pressure — bad news for the defense of the Taiwan Strait.

• Taiwan plans to procure more than 200,000 unmanned vehicles, but only about 1,300 of them are unmanned surface vessels, and those are one-way suicide boats useful only in wartime.
• China sends large numbers of military aircraft, warships, coast guard vessels, sand dredgers and maritime militia boats to harass the waters around Taiwan every day, with the aim of draining Taiwan's stamina and fuel while giving it no justification for going to war.
• Taiwan currently absorbs this pressure with navy warships and coast guard cutters, which amounts to committing its scarcest resource — trained crews — to the least demanding mission.
• The alternative is multi-purpose unmanned vessels that can return to port and put to sea again, capable of surveillance, escort duty and serving as communications relays, and able to be refitted with different mission equipment.
• Genuine autonomy is the key: remotely operated boats merely move the manpower from sea to shore, and 1,300 remotely operated boats would require upwards of a thousand operators; China's electronic warfare and counter-space capabilities could also sever the communications link at any time.

Outlook: Taiwan is being urged to put unmanned vessel vendors through testing in real sea conditions, and to co-produce by integrating US technology with local sensors, command and control systems and maintenance capacity, because the People's Liberation Army will not wait for Taiwan's procurement cycles.