China Counting How Many Missiles It Needs To Win A Taiwan War

(MENAFN- Asia Times) As modern warfare shifts toward attrition, China's push for cheaper munitions raises a sharper question: can its missile industry sustain the scale and tempo a Taiwan war would demand?

This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that China should consider adopting low-cost guided munitions to prepare for future large-scale drone and attrition warfare, according to an analysis in a Chinese military magazine that examines the US's efforts to cut the soaring costs of modern conflict.

The article, published this month in Ordnance Science and Technology and cited by SCMP, says the US has found it financially unsustainable to counter low-cost threats with expensive precision weapons, pointing to US operations in the Red Sea, where missiles costing more than US$2.5 million each were used to intercept Houthi drones worth under $2,000, driving total costs to about $1 billion in 2023.

In response, the US military is developing cheaper long-range munitions such as L3Harris's Wolf Pack system, a compact cruise-missile family priced at roughly $300,000–$400,000 per unit and designed for mass use across land, sea and air platforms.

While these systems trade speed, range, and reliability for affordability, the article argues that China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) could benefit from a similar“high-low mix,” particularly given China's vast industrial base and ability to mass-produce and replenish weapons.

It adds that China's dense air-defense network could blunt such low-cost attacks. Still, it concludes that stockpiling inexpensive munitions remains essential even for rapid victories, underscoring a shift toward industrial capacity and cost control as decisive factors in modern warfare.

In a US-China conflict over Taiwan, China would unleash huge volumes of precision-guided munitions during the opening phases and throughout the campaign.

According to an April 2025 report by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), China's Joint Firepower Strike Campaign is a core operational concept designed to deliver coordinated, cross-domain strikes against an adversary's critical systems at the outset of conflict.

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The report states that the campaign integrates fires from the PLA Rocket Force, Navy, Air Force, and Army to attack command-and-control nodes, air defenses, airfields, ports, and logistics hubs, aiming to paralyze the enemy's operational system.

It notes that ballistic missiles are central to this concept, providing long-range, high-volume precision strikes from mainland launch sites, particularly in support of blockades and amphibious campaigns.

According to the report, large-scale operations would be preceded by massive ballistic-missile barrages, forming the backbone of early joint firepower strikes. However, it mentions that sustained use may be constrained by magazine depth in later phases.

Looking at how many missiles China could deploy in such an event, William Alberque notes in a November 2025 CNN article that China previously believed it needed 5,000-10,000 missiles to defeat Taiwan. Furthermore, Alberque says the Russia-Ukraine War changed China's calculus, possibly leading it to significantly raise its estimates.

Looking specifically at China's ballistic missile arsenal, the US Department of Defense (DoD) China Military Power Reports (CMPR) show steady growth in the PLA Rocket Force's (PLARF) ballistic missile inventory from 2020 to 2025.

In 2020, China fielded over 1,000 short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), hundreds of medium-range (MRBMs) and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), and about 100 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers.

In 2021, SRBM numbers remained above 1,000, while MRBM and IRBM inventories continued to expand, particularly DF-21 and DF-26 systems. In 2022, China began constructing more than 300 new ICBM silos, signaling a sharp acceleration in strategic missile growth.

By 2023, the US DoD assessed that China's ICBM launcher count was rapidly increasing, while its total ballistic missile force was around 2,850 missiles. In 2024, China had 500 operational ICBM launchers and 400 missiles, more than doubling since 2020.

By 2025, the US DoD described PLARF as operating the world's largest land-based ballistic missile arsenal, supporting projections of over 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.

Backing this growth is a large ballistic missile industrial base. Peter Wood and Alex Stone mention in a May 2021 report for the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) that in recent years, the country has rapidly expanded its ballistic missile manufacturing capacity.

According to Wood and Stone, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), the state-owned giants responsible for missile production, have grown their workforce by 50% since 2000, with CASC employing 164,000 and CASIC 150,000 personnel as of 2020.

They note that key facilities such as Factory 211 in Beijing and new satellite campuses in Tianjin and Hebei have added tens of thousands of square meters of production and R&D space. They also note that CASIC's 4th Academy built four new zones and a high-performance computing center to reduce design timelines.

While production rates are not publicly quantified, Wood and Stone confirm a significant expansion of solid and liquid rocket motor output, driven by both military demand and China's growing space launch sector.

However, capacity alone does not guarantee wartime endurance, particularly when missile production is concentrated in a small number of technically complex and tightly integrated facilities.

Despite China's formidable ballistic missile arsenal and defense industrial base, it faces significant challenges. Markus Schiller mentions in a May 2024 report for the Institute of Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH) that China's ballistic missile industry is highly centralized, state-controlled, and technically mature, but still constrained by structural and technical complexities.

Schiller points out that missile development and production are concentrated within CASC and CASIC, whose subordinate academies divide responsibilities for solid propulsion, liquid engines, guidance, and final assembly, creating coordination challenges across programs.

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He also highlights China's long, difficult transition from liquid- to solid-propellant missiles, which delayed the development of mobile and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV)-capable systems for decades.

He points out persistent opacity and data inconsistencies stemming from secrecy, frequent institutional reorganizations, and overlapping responsibilities, which complicate assessments of production efficiency and actual output levels.

Furthermore, a January 2026 Heritage Foundation report identifies several structural challenges in China's missile production despite its large-scale capacity.

The report points out that missile manufacturing is concentrated in a small number of state-owned conglomerates, particularly CASC and CASIC, creating bottlenecks wherein disruption to seeker calibration, warhead integration, or guidance-module assembly could cascade across multiple missile families.

It also states that production depends heavily on specialized energetic materials (RDX, HMX, CL-20) and precision components such as microelectronics and optoelectronics, some of which remain vulnerable to import controls or targeted disruption.

While the Heritage Foundation report says that fixed, highly automated facilities and digitally integrated logistics further improve efficiency, they also increase exposure to cyber, kinetic or infrastructure attacks, potentially constraining sustained missile output in prolonged conflict.

Ultimately, a Taiwan war would expose whether China's impressive missile buildup translates into sustained combat power, or whether industrial bottlenecks and cost pressures blunt the very barrages its war plans depend on.

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