One year ago, Taiwan’s newly inaugurated President Lai Ching-te appointed Wellington Koo as Taiwan’s minister of national defense. Notably, he had no prior military experience – an extreme rarity in Taiwan’s democratic system.
Koo, a former lawyer and legislator, is the first minister of national defense without military experience since Andrew Yang, who held the office for less than a week in 2013. As a civilian, Koo is immune from military group think, an issue that prevented previous defense ministers from fully embracing asymmetry and making significant reforms.
This outside perspective has so far benefited the Lai administration’s vision to adopt a more asymmetric defense strategy. Under Koo’s leadership, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) has built on previous military training reforms from the Tsai administration and begun to prioritize purchasing and producing defense material better suited to asymmetric warfare.
However, retention and recruitment continue to challenge military readiness – challenges that better pay and increased cooperation from the United States could alleviate over time
Why Change Has Been Slow
Traditionally, Taiwanese presidents have appointed former generals to head the MND because of their subject matter expertise and military experience. However, these leaders, though well-intentioned, are often stuck in traditional military thought patterns that hamper any real policy changes.
The Kuomintang (KMT) created the Republic of China military and owned it up until 2000. Because of this, the military was steeped in the KMT’s mindset, which for decades sought reunification with the mainland through conventional warfare. Although it has long since shifted focus to defending the island from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Taiwanese military has struggled to break its old habits.
While institutional change is never easy, change in the military is especially difficult since much of the top brass leadership entered service during the military’s transition to civilian control. While there have been reformers, much of their work was quickly shot down or backtracked.
In 2017, for instance, Admiral Lee Hsi-ming, the former chief of the General Staff, Taiwan’s equivalent to the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, introduced the Overall Defense Concept (ODC), a plan to overhaul Taiwan’s defense strategy in favor of an asymmetric “porcupine strategy.” This plan, among other things, called for the MND to prioritize procuring smaller, more mobile weapon systems that could cause disproportionate damage to an enemy. However, while the Tsai administration supported such efforts, by Lee’s retirement in 2019, military leadership had all but abandoned the ODC.
As a civilian, Koo does not share the same mindset as much of the military’s leadership. This has allowed him to more rapidly transition the Taiwanese military and its doctrine toward asymmetry than his predecessors.
Military Training
One of Koo’s first reform priorities was military training. Taiwanese military doctrine traces its roots back to century-old tactics from the Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzhou, China. Because of this, the military for decades has had lackluster, outdated training that emphasizes antiquated practices.
Basic training for Taiwan’s mandatory conscription service is notorious for lacking any real seriousness, with many conscripts describing it as a summer camp where they sweep and do yardwork all day.
Former President Tsai Ing-wen, toward the end of her term, sought to improve conscription service by increasing the service requirement from four months to a year, with changes to the training curriculum. Koo has built on this progress by further reforming military training.
In the first month as defense minister, Koo overhauled Taiwan’s military academies by eliminating unnecessary practices like goosestepping drills and replacing tactics like bayonet charge training with more modern forms of hand-to-hand combat.
Additionally, Koo replaced scripted drills with real-time exercises featuring decentralized command structures to simulate realistic battlefield conditions. In Taiwan’s most recent annual Han Kuang exercise, soldiers were tested without prior knowledge of drill scenarios, forcing them to adapt in the fog of war.
Procurement and Production
Koo has also prioritized ordering and producing weapon systems better fitted for asymmetric tactics. Taiwan has long focused its weapons purchases on big-ticket items like F-16s and Abrams tanks. While these are high quality systems, they would likely prove to be easy targets for the PLA Air Force and Rocket Force.
Further, big-ticket legacy systems are expensive and take a long time to produce. For example, in 2019 the Taiwanese government ordered 66 F-16 fighter jets from the United States for $8 billion; it will likely not see that order completed until next year at the earliest. Under Koo, however, the MND has begun to purchase smaller, cheaper systems like switchblade drones that can be delivered within a year of purchase. Because these systems are cheaper, the military can purchase them in bulk and use drone swarms to overwhelm the enemy.
In addition to changing what the military procures from abroad, Koo has also sought to increase domestic production for defense material like drones to make the country more self-reliant. This builds on the Tsai administration’s successful defense industrial buildup, which saw Taiwan’s missile production multiply fivefold from 2022 to 2024.
Under Koo’s leadership, the Lai administration has set a goal for the Chung Shan Institution of Science and Technology, Taiwan’s primary arms producer, to increase its domestic output of military drones to 15,000 per month by 2028 – a figure three times its current rate.
In addition, the MND is now courting private drone companies in Taiwan to design and purchase dual-use drones for the country’s defense needs. This effort is already seeing success. This past March, Taiwan-based China Shipbuilding Corporation (CSBC) unveiled its Endeavor Manta sea drone, which can effectively perform military functions in the Taiwan Strait’s turbulent conditions. Further underscoring its success, CSBC began producing this vessel about one year after its conception.
Human Resource Challenges
Despite these meaningful changes, the Taiwanese military continues to struggle with worsening recruitment and retention. The Taiwanese military has consistently seen year-over-year declines in active-duty service members. Last year the military operated at 78.6 percent capacity – a number far below its minimum operational standard of 85 percent.
While Taiwan’s shrinking population – an issue affecting the militaries of most East Asian states, including China – is the main factor, Taiwan’s military faces several specific challenges.
The most common reason service members leave the military is to pursue employment with better pay and benefits. Military pay in Taiwan is notoriously low. According to the MND’s most recent pay scale, an officer’s base pay would not reach the minimum threshold for what is considered middle class until they reach the rank of captain. Compare this figure to their U.S. counterparts, who would be considered middle class at a second lieutenant’s base pay.
To offset the low pay, the government, beginning on April 1, increased monthly allowances, which are separate from base pay, by 50 percent for volunteer enlistees, with higher increases for those in combat roles. Currently, the MND is considering increasing base pay, but is awaiting Cabinet review.
One of the allures of military service in Taiwan was the military’s generous pension program, which was significantly higher than what most civilian and public sector jobs offered. However, in 2018 the Tsai administration cut pensions 15 to 20 percent across the military, with greater cuts at higher ranks.
While this move was necessary to keep pensions sustainable, it sparked outrage in the veteran community, which viewed it as a breach of contract. The specter of broken promises means prospective and current service members are less likely to trust any future promises of compensation or benefits.
Compounding this, the military has long suffered from poor public perception. As the enforcing arm of KMT authoritarianism during the “White Terror” that ended in 1991, the public has a general distrust of the military. In addition, the military’s reputation for outdated and ineffective training disincentivizes even the most patriotic citizens from joining.
While Koo’s reforms are necessary and will likely improve recruitment and retention over time, they may be causing an adverse effect in the short term. Having been indoctrinated in the military’s old methods, military leadership is largely unprepared to adapt to the MND’s rapid changes. This has led to increased workloads and burnout among the non-commissioned officer (NCO) and junior officer corps, exacerbating military attrition rates.
Recommendations
Koo’s reforms, particularly in military training, will likely improve the military’s reputation and effectiveness in the long term. However, this will take time – time Taiwan may not have.
To improve recruitment and retention in the short term, the MND and Lai’s Cabinet should work together to significantly increase servicemembers’ base pay – ideally matching that of U.S. servicemembers. Such a move could win bipartisan support, with the KMT opposition proposing wage increases as recently as March.
The United States can help facilitate Taiwan’s defense reforms by increasing U.S. military cooperation with Taiwan. So far, the U.S. government has made positive moves in this direction by training Taiwanese servicemembers both in the United States and Taiwan. Continued U.S. training will ease the burden on Taiwan’s NCO and junior officer corps and help break old thought patterns.
Lai’s choice to install Wellington Koo as defense minister has so far proved a smart move. With an outsider’s perspective and fresh thinking, Koo has made significant meaningful reforms. However, while these reforms will prove beneficial over time, they may worsen issues like recruitment and retention in the short term. To combat the negative effects, the Taiwanese government may consider increasing military pay and training with the U.S. military.