U.S. military plans 'Hellscape' to deter China from attacking Taiwan

China’s likely strategy is to overwhelm Taiwan with a massive attack with little warning, Paparo said.

Xi doesn’t want to repeat Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mistake in Ukraine in 2022, when Russia’s initial full-scale invasion failed and devolved into a long war of attrition.

The key to thwarting Xi’s assumed strategy is a U.S. strategy called “Hellscape,” Paparo told me. The idea is that as soon as China’s invasion fleet begins moving across the 100-mile waterway that separates China and Taiwan, the U.S. military would deploy thousands of unmanned submarines, unmanned surface ships and aerial drones to flood the area and give Taiwanese, U.S. and partner forces time to mount a full response.

“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” Paparo said. “So that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.”

There are some public signs the Hellscape plan is making progress. In March, the Defense Department announced it would spend $1 billion on a program called “Replicator” to build swarms of unmanned surface ships and aerial drones for this very mission.

Paparo said the Replicator program shows that the United States is also learning lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, where Ukraine has innovated with drone technology.