Taiwan is racing to raise its own missile shield — a homegrown “T-Dome” defense network meant to keep the island fighting in the opening hours of war — as China masses new missile bases and hypersonic weapons along its coast.
This month, multiple news outlets reported that Taiwan President Lai Ching-te announced plans to build a new multi-layered missile defense network, modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome, to shield the island from China’s mounting threats.
In his National Day address, Lai said the T-Dome initiative — short for “Taiwan Dome” — will form part of a special defense budget to be proposed by year’s end and will raise defense spending beyond 3% of GDP, targeting 5% by 2030.
The system aims to integrate high-level detection and interception capabilities, creating a nationwide “safety net” against missiles, drones and other Chinese aerial threats. Taiwan currently relies on US-made Patriot missiles and indigenous Sky Bow (Tien Kung) interceptors, and recently unveiled the Chiang-Kong system for mid-range ballistic defense.
Lai emphasized that deterrence through strength is essential to maintaining peace, urging China to renounce the use of force and respect the cross-strait status quo. China’s Foreign Ministry condemned Lai as a “separatist” and warned that seeking independence by force would “drag Taiwan into conflict.”
The US, meanwhile, welcomed Lai’s pledge to bolster defense spending and uphold stability while reiterating that routine speeches should not provoke coercive action. Taiwan’s announcement underscores a broader shift toward self-reliance as China expands its stealth, naval and missile capabilities.
China’s growing missile capabilities provide a strong argument for Taiwan’s missile shield program. Chris Buckley and Pablo Robles noted in a September 2025 New York Times article that China is transforming parts of its east coast into platforms for missile strikes against Taiwan.
While they state that it is unclear how many missile bases are on China’s east coast and targeting Taiwan, satellite images show missile brigades have built bigger bases and added more launchpads in recent years. Specifically, they point out that Brigade 611’s base in Anhui, near China’s east coast, has doubled in size in recent years, with three dozen new launchpads and possibly dummy tunnels for training.
Buckley and Robles mention that Brigade 616 in Jiangxi, south of Anhui, has also expanded quickly, citing satellite images from 2020 that show China has cleared farmland for the base, finishing the facility in just 18 months.
Moreover, the writers say that China’s eastern missile bases are increasingly deploying more advanced projectiles, with Brigade 611 prepped to deploy the DF-26 “Guam Killer” missile while Brigade 616 is equipped with the DF-17 hypersonic missile. They cite US Department of Defense estimates that say the PLARF has grown by 50% in four years, adding 3,500 more missiles to its arsenal.
So how does Taiwan’s missile defense plan stack up against China’s surging threat?
Tianran Xu writes in the Open Nuclear Network that Taiwan’s Patriot and Tien Kung systems provide dense coverage but remain quantitatively inadequate against China’s massive missile arsenal.
Xu says Taiwan operates nine Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC)-2/3 batteries and 12 Tien Kung-2/3 batteries, with the Tien Kung-4 and PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) entering service by 2026.
He notes that PAC-3 Cost Reduction Initiative (CRI) interceptors – about 380 missiles as of April 2025 – are Taiwan’s only proven anti-tactical ballistic missile (ATBM) weapons, while the Tien Kung-3, with its directional-fragmentation warhead and Mach 5.5 speed, offers limited ATBM capability.
As for the Chiang-Kong system, Joe Trevithick mentions in a September 2025 article for The War Zone (TWZ) that it can engage targets up to 70 kilometers in altitude, comparable to Israel’s Arrow 2, and complements existing Tien Kung-3 and Patriot systems. However, Trevithick notes that Chiang-Kong’s hit-to-kill capability remains unclear, and operational deployment speed is uncertain.
Both Xu and Trevithick note that the main challenges Taiwan’s missile shield faces are survivability and mobility, scalability due to the high costs of interceptor missiles and effectiveness against a saturation missile attack.
These limitations suggest that, alongside defending against missile attacks, Taiwan may only be able to pursue limited offensive capabilities against China’s missile launch facilities and mobile launchers — a “shooting the archer” approach akin to Japan’s nascent counterstrike capabilities, rather than trying to shoot down incoming missiles with limited and untested defenses.
Additionally, while Taiwan’s proposed T-Dome improves deterrence through denial, the system does not offer deterrence by punishment – the type of threat needed to prevent China from invading in the first place.
Although T-Dome could take various defensive actions to make decapitation strikes involving air and missile attacks targeting Taiwan’s leadership and its energy grid more difficult, it may not stop a determined adversary like China from proceeding with an invasion despite the risk of catastrophic losses should the US and its allies intervene.
To reduce the risk of being overwhelmed by a saturation attack, save substantial numbers of interceptors, and provide deterrence by punishment, Taiwan has developed a formidable missile arsenal capable of striking targets on the Chinese mainland.
These include the Hsiung Feng III with a 400-kilometer range, and the Ching Tien supersonic cruise missile with a 2,000-kilometer range — the latter being upgraded into a hypersonic weapon with a range over 2,000 kilometers.
These long-range missiles can target invasion staging areas, missile bases and launchers, critical infrastructure and military facilities crucial for supporting a Chinese invasion. Such strikes could also galvanize Chinese public opinion against an invasion.
However, strikes on mainland China could also have the opposite effect, rallying domestic support and giving Beijing a stronger justification to double down on its invasion efforts.
Those efforts could include intensified missile barrages to exhaust Taiwan’s limited interceptors and a full mobilization of military, paramilitary and police forces transported across the strait to overwhelm its defenders.
Ultimately, T-Dome’s rationale, as with Taiwan’s broader defense strategy, may be to buy time for US and allied intervention in the event of a Chinese invasion. How much time T-Dome could buy depends on whether the system can survive China’s missile barrages and if its interceptor stocks last long enough for outside help to arrive.
A June 2023 RAND analysis noted that Taiwan is most vulnerable in the first 90 days of a Chinese invasion attempt – the amount of time the US is estimated to need to marshal sufficient forces to intervene.
T-Dome may not guarantee invulnerability, but it signals Taiwan’s resolve to withstand China’s first blows and keep fighting until US aid arrives. In the long game, survival in the opening hours could decide whether Taiwan endures or falls before the US and its allies could react.
