Although former premier Tang Fei (唐飛) said on Aug. 17 that Taiwan’s indigenous Hsiung Feng III anti-ship missile would be like a mosquito’s bite on an elephant, a new report by a US think tank argues that Taiwan must have “some means of hitting back against Chinese military targets.”

“The ability to hit back at Chinese military targets may not have profound operational effects, but when an inferior force takes on a superior one, the ability to strike back has a nontrivial strategic and psychological impact on an attacker,” said the 38-page Asian Alliances in the 21st Century report, released on Tuesday by the Washington-based think tank Project 2049 Institute.