VIGIL CONSILIUMSearch
Context. Not headlines.
Conflict coverage · Taiwan Strait

Force Structure

Every published organisation on both sides, as an order of battle you can walk: pick a formation, see the parent above it and its subordinates below, and read what the record itself states.

Context, not targeting. This atlas describes structure and history. It deliberately excludes current locations, live strength, unit movements, and anything operationally sensitive — the content model has no fields for them. See the methodology.
01

Order of battle

Structural · historical · non-operational

This view needs JavaScript. Every organisation it draws has a permanent page of its own — the Formations indexlists all of them, and the browser on the left links each one.

Line pattern is the subordination the record states: solid confirmed · dashed reported · fine dots disputed · sparse dots unknown or historical. Vigil category device — drawn from this record’s own domain, echelon and role. Not an official insignia. No positions, strengths, readiness or movements are published, and none is drawn.

02

Equipment Library

Major publicly documented systems · full profiles and structured records

Reviewed profiles of major publicly documented systems — the ones unit profiles and key events link to, each with a permanent page. The full structured catalogue, including the stub index, lives at Equipment. Each system's confidence grade, status date and sources are shown on its own record.

Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The largest coast guard vessels in the world — and arguably the most strategically effective platforms in this entire module, precisely because they are not warships.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The land-based conventional missile capability that features in every assessment of the regional balance — recorded here as a broad category only, with no targeting-relevant detail.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
Taiwan's airborne radar picket — a handful of aircraft carrying the only sensor that can see beyond the island's horizon, and therefore a capability whose small number is itself the analytical point.
Origin
United States
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
Taiwan's principal fighter and the aircraft most often meeting reported PLA activity — significant here as the visible instrument of a daily attrition problem, not as a war-winning capability.
Origin
United States
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait · global service

H-6 bomber family

Combat aircraft
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
A modernised bomber lineage used principally as a missile carrier — and one of the most politically legible aircraft in the theatre, because its appearance on a flight is itself a signal.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait

Harpoon coastal defence system

Missile / precision strike
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
A large US coastal-defence missile order that became the test case for whether American arms actually arrive on schedule — the supply-chain question at the centre of the alliance-credibility file.
Origin
United States
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait · global service

Hsiung Feng anti-ship missile family

Missile / precision strike
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
Taiwan's indigenous anti-ship missile family — the clearest expression of a sea-denial strategy, and the capability class most consistently recommended by advocates of asymmetric defence.
Origin
Taiwan
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
Taiwan's domestically developed fighter — militarily a capable second-tier type, and historically significant as the product of an arms embargo that forced self-reliance.
Origin
Taiwan
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait

J-16

Combat aircraft
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
A heavy multirole fighter, and the type most frequently named in Taiwanese reporting of aircraft detected around the island — the workhorse of the routine pressure activity.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait

J-20

Combat aircraft
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
China's low-observable fighter — significant less for any single engagement than for what its production rate says about the trajectory of the regional air balance.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The PLA's standard airborne radar aircraft — the thing that makes a package of fighters into a system, and the aircraft type whose presence changes what a day's activity around Taiwan actually means.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait

M142 HIMARS (Taiwan)

Rocket artillery
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The wheeled rocket launcher that gave Taiwan a mobile long-range fires capability it did not previously have — and the clearest single measure of whether US arms transfers are actually arriving.
Origin
United States
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
Small purpose-built minelayers — the Republic of China Navy's first, and the most literal expression of a denial strategy in the whole Taiwanese inventory.
Origin
Taiwan
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait

Mirage 2000-5

Combat aircraft
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The third type in Taiwan's 1990s fighter acquisition — capable in the interception role, and the clearest illustration of the sustainment cost of operating a small fleet of a type few others fly.
Origin
France
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The upper layer of Taiwan's air and missile defence, and a central component of the integrated air-defence programme the 2026 special budget was written to fund.
Origin
United States
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait · global service
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The uncrewed aircraft that circle Taiwan and appear by type in its daily detection reports — the cheapest way to sustain pressure, and the one a fighter scramble answers least well.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The phased-array radar that gives Taiwan its ballistic-missile warning — the origin of every published figure for how many minutes the island would have.
Origin
United States
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait

Taiwanese loitering munitions

Strike UAV / loitering munition
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The cheap expendable strike systems Taiwan's asymmetric-defence advocates argue for most consistently — and, for the first time, a category where procurement is visibly following the argument.
Origin
United States, Taiwan
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
Taiwan's indigenous surface-to-air missile family — the domestically controlled element of its layered air defence, and the core of the integrated air-defence concept publicised as "T-Dome".
Origin
Taiwan
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
A small, fast, heavily armed catamaran corvette — the physical expression of Taiwan's shift from a few large warships toward many small ones.
Origin
Taiwan
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The PLA Navy's general-purpose frigate, and the class that does most of the routine work around Taiwan — the ordinary ship, which is why it matters more than the impressive ones.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait

Type 055 destroyer

Naval vessel
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
China's largest and most capable surface combatant — significant primarily as evidence of shipbuilding capacity, which is the more consequential fact.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The PLA Navy's amphibious workhorse — less discussed than the big assault ships and considerably more relevant to how amphibious lift actually works.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
Large amphibious vessels — the ship class most often cited in invasion discussion, and one where the analytically interesting point runs against the popular framing.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait

Y-20

Transport / tanker aircraft
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
A large transport and tanker aircraft — unglamorous, and among the more meaningful indicators in the theatre, because reach depends on refuelling and airlift far more than on fighters.
Origin
China
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait