Unmanned systems, a single theater, and a democratic shield for the first island chain

Unmanned systems, a single theater, and a democratic shield for the first island chain

• Data Source：Department of NGO International Affairs
• Date：2026-04-11

Dr. Lin Chia-lung

Minister of Foreign Affairs

Republic of China (Taiwan)

April 11, 2026

(As Prepared for Delivery)

Dr. Chen Yen-shen, Chairman of the Formosa Republican Association;

Dr. Tommy Lin, Honorary Chair of the Formosa Republican Association;

General Charles Flynn, former Commanding General of United States Army Pacific;

General Iwasaki Shigeru, former Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff of the Japan Self-Defense Forces;

Admiral Tomohisa Takei, 32nd Chief of Staff of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force;

General Kiyofumi Iwata, 34th Chief of Staff of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force;

General Leem Ho-young, Deputy Commander of the Republic of Korea-United States Combined Forces Command;

Distinguished guests and panelists;

Ladies and gentlemen:

Good morning!

First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Formosa Republican Association for convening this strategically important dialogue. It is a great honor to join so many esteemed friends from Taiwan, Japan, the United States, and South Korea who are all concerned about peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific.

We are gathered here today not only to exchange views and assess the regional situation. We are confronting a reality that is becoming clearer day by day. The first island chain is no longer a line on a map. It has become a major front line for global freedom, democracy, and order.

And our shared priority remains unchanged-to prevent war and preserve peace.

But peace is never sustained by hope alone. Peace endures when those who seek to destroy it recognize that they cannot succeed. That is why truly durable peace must rest on credible deterrence.

In the face of mounting military pressure, gray-zone intimidation, cognitive warfare, and economic coercion from the People's Republic of China, we can no longer rely on independent defense and response systems. We must move toward building a collective and coordinated democratic shield for the first island chain.

Dear friends, the challenges that we face today are not isolated incidents. Gray-zone coercion of South Korea; ongoing maneuvers in the waters and airspace around Japan; military pressure on the United States in the Western Pacific; and encirclement drills, blockade rehearsals, and cognitive warfare targeting Taiwan are not unconnected. They are part of an overall and coordinated security threat.

I would therefore like to emphasize one key idea: We must begin to understand the first island chain through the lens of a single theater.

The Taiwan Strait, the East and South China Seas, the Miyako Strait, the Bashi Channel, and their surrounding sea and air spaces may appear to be separate domains and separate issues. But from the perspective of authoritarian expansionism, gray-zone tactics, electromagnetic disruption, supply chain coercion, and cognitive warfare, they are increasingly being integrated into the same strategic framework.

This means that the first island chain should no longer be regarded as a collection of isolated points of defense. It must instead be understood as a single theater where we jointly monitor the situation, issue joint warnings, conduct joint deployments, and jointly maintain resilience.

Within that single theater, unmanned systems are becoming a key component of the democratic shield.

Unmanned aerial systems are the eyes that never sleep. Unmanned surface vessels are low-cost, high-endurance guardians of the ocean. And unmanned underwater vehicles and underwater sensing nodes are essential to protecting ports, sea lanes, and undersea infrastructure.

When these systems are combined with space-based and airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); electronic defense; data links; and joint operational nodes, they become far more than individual mechanisms. They form a complete defensive architecture that can detect threats earlier, share information faster, distribute risk more effectively, and sustain operational tempo for longer.

This is especially important for Taiwan. Against a much larger authoritarian power, Taiwan cannot and should not try to compete symmetrically. What it needs is an asymmetric framework that raises the cost of invasion, disrupts tempo, and extends resilience. Unmanned systems are central to that strategy.

I want to underline that unmanned systems not only have military applications. They force us to take a fresh look at low-altitude airspace as more than a battlespace; it is also a sphere of governance.

For Taiwan, low-altitude airspace is tied to daily coastal patrols, bridge inspections, mountain search and rescue, port security, disaster response, and logistics for outlying islands. As these peacetime tasks increasingly rely on unmanned systems, low-altitude governance is becoming part of national resilience.

In other words, building the democratic shield should not start in wartime. It should be built up step by step in peacetime governance.

Ladies and gentlemen, if unmanned devices are the nervous system of the democratic shield, then democratic supply chains are its backbone.

We cannot talk about frontline deployment without mentioning flight control systems, sensors, batteries, communication modules, cybersecurity validation, maintenance, and rapid replenishment capacity. In a single theater, supply chains are not a secondary issue. They are part of the overall strategy.

That is why the Western Pacific needs more stable, more distributed, and more trustworthy supply chains for unmanned systems. Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and the United States should jointly create a framework for diverse production, maintenance, and support.

In this, Taiwan has a particularly important role.

Taiwan's strengths lie not only in production but in integration. We have semiconductors, electronics manufacturing services, precision engineering, sensor modules, communications technology, AI capabilities, and dense supply-chain coordination. More importantly, Taiwan's institutions enjoy a high level of trust.

For an unmanned system that relies heavily on data links, flight control logic, and verifiable cybersecurity, a trusted source is in itself a strategic asset.

Taiwan's strategic role should not be limited to turning out more products. Taiwan needs to be an indispensable hub for unmanned systems in the democratic community. We are ready to be a supplier of frontline operational scenarios, a key link in democratic supply chains, a model for institutional innovation, and a platform for international training and capacity building.

That is why we need schools as well as equipment. We need know-how as well as factories. And we need systematic talent development as well as military tactics.

In the future, competition will not just be decided by who owns the hardware, but by who has the people to operate it, maintain it, integrate it, apply it, and continuously improve it. If we are serious about collectively defending the first island chain as a single theater, then we must develop an international pool of talent that understands unmanned systems, low-altitude governance, electromagnetic environments, and data link coordination.

My friends, if we extend our single theater perspective further south, the importance of the Philippines comes into sharper focus. The Philippines is much more than an overseas market or a neighboring country. It is a key link in the southern segment of the first island chain. It is a testing ground for the convergence of archipelagic governance, sea and air surveillance, disaster management, island logistics, and regional security challenges.

This teaches us an important lesson. Future cooperation in the first island chain does not have to start with ultra-sensitive military cooperation. It can begin with less sensitive but very practical, visible, and trust-building initiatives such as medical resupply to outlying islands, postdisaster assessment, coastal patrols, port security, communications relay, agricultural product inspections, and bridge and infrastructure surveys. These may appear to be civilian or governance issues. But, in reality, they also build theater resilience.

In discussing a single theater today, we should look at it not only as a place for joint operations. We should also regard it as a space for joint governance, joint response, joint training, joint supply chains, and joint resilience.

A truly effective democratic shield is not hastily put together during a crisis. It is built in advance through mutual connections, mutual understanding, mutual complementarity, and mutual trust.

In the end, trust comes down to supply chains and institutions. If an unmanned system can be paralyzed by wartime shortages, if a data link cannot interoperate with partners in a crisis, if a maintenance structure cannot be replenished quickly, and if a training system has not reached optimal capacity in peacetime, then even the most advanced equipment will struggle to provide credible deterrence.

Looking ahead, the key to a democratic shield for the first island chain does not depend on how many platforms we can acquire. It comes down to whether we can build a comprehensive framework that links research, development, manufacturing, validation, training, maintenance, and deployment into one coherent system.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me return to my central point.

When we speak today about the first island chain, a single theater, unmanned systems, and a democratic shield, we are not calling for war. On the contrary, we want to prevent conflict. We emphasize deterrence not because we want confrontation, but because we know that peace is more likely to endure when aggressors understand that they cannot prevail.

So let me conclude with one thought.

A democratic shield for the first island chain is not a wall. It is a network. It is not a static line of defense, but a dynamic and resilient structure in a single theater. It is established by forward deployment, expanded by unmanned systems, supported by low-altitude governance, sustained by democratic supply chains, strengthened by joint training, reinforced by whole-of-society resilience, and ultimately legitimized by the shared values of free people.

If we can translate the idea of a single theater into concrete action-into shared monitoring, shared deployment, shared maintenance, and shared resilience-and if we can elevate unmanned systems from being isolated technological solutions into a core pillar of democratic collective defense, then the first island chain will be more than a front line. It will become a chain of stability, a chain of cooperation, and a chain of freedom.

I wish this forum every success. And I hope that today's discussions will lead to more concrete cooperation, more mature frameworks, and a stronger democratic shield.

Thank you.