The conflict in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, has provided extraordinary lessons about the future of war. The enormous impact of cheap, remotely piloted unmanned systems—on the ground, in the air, and at sea—cannot be overstated. But there is a danger that military strategists will look at the battlefield in Ukraine and see little more than a catalog of weapons to buy.

Although lessons about particular weapons systems are relevant, the more important lesson is about the ecosystem necessary for these new tools to be effective. Ukraine, for instance, has developed Sky Fortress, a network of 14,000 acoustic sensors that locate Russian drones by sound, even at altitudes radar cannot see, to provide a high-fidelity picture of incoming threats. It also has its own battle-management software systems that direct unmanned surveillance, as well as the Unmanned Services Force, an entirely new military service—alongside the army, navy, and air force—that is dedicated to drone warfare, with its own doctrine, leader development, procurement processes, and even recruiting and basic training. Perhaps most critically, the ecosystem in Ukraine also includes manufacturers that can produce enormous quantities of unmanned systems and constantly refine the software and hardware of those systems in response to developments on the battlefield.

The risk of missing this wider lesson is especially acute for Taiwan, which also faces the threat of invasion by a larger aggressor. Taiwan’s leaders and partners frequently say that the island is intently focused on understanding the nature of modern warfare, especially what is happening in Ukraine, in order to prepare for and thus deter Chinese aggression. But while Ukraine’s achievements are admired in Taiwan, that admiration has not yet produced the enormous, fundamental changes that enabled Ukraine’s success.

Indeed, it is not yet clear that Taiwan’s leaders fully understand the Ukraine lesson. Despite the current administration’s stated ambition to eventually field tens of thousands of aerial drones and well over a thousand uncrewed surface vessels, Taiwan’s legislature struck domestic drone production from the government’s special defense budget earlier this year. The opposition parties that control the legislature cited fiscal discipline as well as concerns about potential corruption in domestic procurement, but the move’s overall effect was to dramatically reduce new domestic procurement of unmanned systems and to cut funds set aside for joint development of such systems with the United States.

Even if Taiwan’s politicians can one day muster the funding for substantial quantities of drones, the island still remains far from making the considerable institutional changes needed to ensure their effective employment. The gap between admiring Ukraine’s success and replicating it, in other words, is precisely the gap Taiwan has yet to close.

HOW UKRAINE REWROTE THE RULES

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine sank its own flagship (lest it be seized by Russia) and was left, in effect, without a navy. Yet within two years, Ukraine had driven the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol, sunk over one-third of Russia’s ships on the Black Sea, and forced the remainder of the fleet to tie up in a port as far from Ukraine as possible. Ukraine accomplished this not by acquiring traditional ships but by devising a........

© Foreign Affairs