Chinese Military Reaping Benefits Of Ukraine War Without Having To Fire A Single Shot
China is studying Russia's bloody war in Ukraine, but experts warn the lessons learned could make Beijing think twice about invading Taiwan.
Francis Kapper·Oct 12, 2026·10 min read
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China is studying Russia’s bloody war in Ukraine, but experts warn the lessons learned could make Beijing think twice about invading Taiwan.
The Chinese military is drawing lessons from Russian battlefield tactics and Ukraine’s successful attacks against Russian warships, airfields and military installations, according to a newCenter for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report. The findings raise questions about whether Beijing could use the conflict to improve its chances in a future war over Taiwan, potentially challenging American military superiority in the Indo-Pacific, according to theCSIS analysis published Wednesday.
“Russian experience in its war against Ukraine is of exceptional strategic, tactical, and operational value to Communist China,” Matthew Boyse, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Beijing has been building up its military for decades but, despite its massive capabilities, has not fought a hot war since 1979 and its military lacks battlefield experience, in the most modern forms of warfare, which it can only get from .”
China has also helped sustain Russia’s war effort by supplying dual-use technology, including weapons components, industrial equipment and raw materials used in military production, according to NATO.
The researchers examined more than 90 Chinese-language sources published between July 2022 and August 2026, including military publications, defense industry research and government announcements. They discovered that Chinese analysts typically identify new battlefield tactics within four months, although implementing those lessons often takes at least a year, according to CSIS.
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Chinese Military Reaping Benefits Of Ukraine War Without Having To Fire A Single Shot — IJR
Their findings suggest that Chinese military planners are particularly interested in learning from Russia’s vulnerabilities, including its difficulties defending expensive military equipment against inexpensive Ukrainian drones.
Nearly half the Chinese sources examined appeared in publications associated with defense industrial institutions. These organizations develop weapons and military technology, providing a pathway for battlefield observations to influence Chinese procurement and equipment design, according to CSIS.
“China alone is not getting ahead of anyone,” Steve Bucci, a retired Army colonel and visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Phillip N. Truluck Center for Leadership Development, told the DCNF. “China’s tech is not that good (look at the total failure of the Chinese air defense systems in protecting Iran) … It will be an addition to warfighting techniques, on all sides, but not a breakthrough for one side against all others.”
“The CSIS report suggests that China is studying Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russian warships and airfields partly because they raise questions about vulnerabilities in its own forces,” Stephen Herzog, a Professor of the Practice at Middlebury College, told the DCNF. “That makes sense. But studying Russian mistakes isn’t proof that Beijing could simply avoid them in a potential conflict over Taiwan. The Pentagon should be taking these lessons seriously too, pairing advanced weapons with affordable drone defenses and ensuring that bases can keep operating even when under attack.”
American defenses have already failed to prevent widespread damage to military installations in the Middle East. Iranian strikes damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases across eight countries, according to the Pentagon inspector general.
Other experts said Russia’s experience in Ukraine shows China will struggle to defeat Taiwan, just as the U.S. has struggled to defeat Iran, as both the real and hypothetical conflict would pit a larger power against a smaller one.
“Russia’s experience shows that even a smaller, militarily disadvantaged country can sustain its resistance when its population is willing to fight, and it receives substantial international support,” Yao-Yuan Yeh, a political science professor and director of the Taiwan and East Asia Studies Program at the University of St. Thomas, told the DCNF. “For China, this is a reminder that invading Taiwan could be far costlier and more difficult than Beijing might initially anticipate.”
“Taken together, these lessons should give Chinese leaders additional reasons to reconsider the costs of military aggression against Taiwan,” Yeh said. “The potential costs of an invasion may far outweigh any anticipated benefits. From this perspective, the most important lesson China could learn from Ukraine is that avoiding war may ultimately be the more rational strategic choice.”
“When Moscow first invaded Ukraine (just weeks after Putin had appeared in Beijing next to Xi at the opening of the winter games) the concern was that the lesson would be invasion is relatively cost-free and this would embolden China to act more assertively towards Taiwan,” Allen Carlson, an associate professor at Cornell University, told the DCNF. “Now more than four years later, the lesson has become one of caution: in today’s battlefield, asymmetrical power advantages may be being eroded by the proliferation of cheap counter weapons (particularly drones). This is perhaps even more evident when it comes to the course of the ongoing US-Iran war.”
China’s military modernization efforts include preparations for an amphibious invasion, missile strikes and a potential maritime blockade of Taiwan. The PLA is also improving its ability to threaten American forces operating throughout the region, according to thePentagon’s 2025 China Military Power Report.
“Russia’s initial failures illustrate the danger of planning a war around optimistic political assumptions: that the opponent will collapse, resistance will be limited, and military success will quickly deliver the desired settlement,” Michael Swaine, a senior research fellow in the Quincy Institute’s East Asia Program, told the DCNF. “Poor logistics, inadequate coordination among services, and a failure to eliminate mobile air defenses compounded those errors. By implication, Chinese planners cannot assume that Taiwan’s government would collapse or that its population would acquiesce after an opening attack. “
The Pentagon has identified 2027 as an important milestone in Chinese military preparations for a possible Taiwan conflict. However, that benchmark concerns military capabilities and does not necessarily mean Beijing intends to launch an invasion that year, according to aDefense Department briefing.
“Certainly China will be keen to learn from Russia’s mistakes,” Andrew Yeh, senior director for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific at the London-based China Strategic Risks Institute, told the DCNF. “But this doesn’t just apply to the military tactics. A long and prolonged war across the Taiwan Strait would be devastating to China’s own economy, as well as globally. China may well look Russia’s experience in Ukraine — and the U.S. experience in Iran — and decide it wants to avoid getting bogged down in lengthy military conflicts.”
Russian forces have used Orlan-10 reconnaissance drones to locate Ukrainian targets before directing Lancet and Kub loitering munitions against them, according to aChinese military research paper cited by CSIS. Russian forces can reportedly strike detected targets within three to five minutes, compared with hours in earlier wars, according toPLA Daily, citing researchers at China’s National Defense University.
“U.S. assets in Indo-Pacific have in recent years become increasingly vulnerable to PRC technological advances. This makes deterrence and better defensive measures all the more important for the US,” Boyse told the DCNF. “Again, the Iranian case is also very relevant: when an adversary accumulates such large numbers of drones that it can overwhelm defenses, it gains a critical advantage over its adversaries, aka second-strike capability.”
“Successive U.S. administrations have pushed Taiwan to adopt the kinds of ‘asymmetric’ capabilities that Ukraine has used to effectively hold back Russia’s invasion,” Yeh told the DCNF. “This includes drone warfare, as well as anti-ship, air defence and other defensive systems. However, many of these vital weapons are held up in the $14 billion arms package that is still awaiting President Trump’s approval, and has been held in abeyance as part of a ‘bargaining chip’ with China.”
Trump has held up roughly $14 billion in proposed weapons sales to Taiwan since his May summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, describing the deal as a “very good negotiating chip” in negotiations with Beijing. The package remained stalled in October, Reuters reported.
“The war has demonstrated the effectiveness of drones and other asymmetric warfare capabilities,” Yeh told the DCNF. “Relatively inexpensive weapons can inflict substantial damage on much more expensive military assets, allowing a weaker military to challenge a stronger opponent. This fundamentally changes the cost-benefit calculations of modern warfare.
Another development involves fiber-optic drones, which use physical cables to maintain communication between operators and aircraft.
“DoW is studying these technologies intensely but despite SecWar Hegseth’s and SecState Rubio’s demands that their Departments ‘move with the speed of relevance’,” Boyse told the DCNF. “Their bureaucracies don’t always adapt as quickly as necessary. The incorporation of innovative inputs from start-ups and smaller, more agile defense tech firms is critical as the primes don’t always have the answers.”
By April 2025, Chinese state television was documenting security forces training with first-person-view drones and researching fiber-optic models. The development demonstrated how quickly Russian battlefield innovations could enter Chinese military experimentation, according to CSIS.
“It would be easy to say that the United States has not adequately prepared for drone warfare, but fairer and more accurate to say that few countries have adapted sufficiently,” Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist and co-director of MIT’s Wargaming Lab, told the DCNF. “The Chinese fleet is based largely on the same kinds of warships that characterize the U.S. fleet, and the rapid evolution of drone warfare presents challenges to both fleets as well as to national military strategies more generally. “
Chinese naval researchers have closely examined Ukraine’s successful attacks against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, including strikes involving unmanned surface vessels.
In April 2026, Chinese naval forces conducted live-fire training against unmanned boats, followed by exercises involving armed drones attacking fast-moving maritime targets during the summer. The developments illustrate Beijing’s efforts to incorporate lessons from Russia’s naval losses, according to CSIS.
“For the Chinese, this would make an invasion of Taiwan, for which it would need to control offshore areas, more difficult,” Heginbotham told the DCNF. “It may make a blockade of Taiwan easier in the sense that it can threaten shipping to and around the island more difficult. At the same time, however, China may be more vulnerable to a counter-blockade by the United States.”
Ukraine’s June 1, 2025, Operation Spider’s Web has attracted particular attention from Chinese military planners.
The operation involved Ukrainian drones launched from inside Russia against military airfields housing strategic bombers. Chinese analysts examined how the attack exposed vulnerabilities in facilities located far from conventional battlefields, according toCSIS.
Within approximately four and a half months, Chinese forces conducted exercises simulating similar attacks.
One October 2025 exercise featured more than 20 drone operators attempting to penetrate military defenses. Chinese troops employed detection equipment capable of identifying more than 800 commercial drone models, according to China’s state broadcasterCCTV.
These developments could become especially consequential during a confrontation over Taiwan.
A 2023 CSIS war game examining 24 potential Chinese invasion scenarios found that American, Taiwanese and Japanese forces could defeat a conventional amphibious invasion in most cases, but at tremendous cost.
American and allied forces suffered extensive aircraft and naval losses in the simulations, while Taiwan experienced devastating economic damage. The outcomes also threatened to weaken America’s global military position for years afterward, according to theCSIS war game.
China’s centralized military structure may struggle to recreate the rapid improvisation and battlefield feedback that have allowed Russian and Ukrainian forces to modify equipment under combat conditions.
Nevertheless, Beijing’s ability to study a major war without directly participating allows its military institutions to examine costly mistakes and experiment with solutions before facing a comparable conflict.
Whether that advantage ultimately translates into greater Chinese combat effectiveness remains uncertain, but the research provides evidence that Beijing is already preparing for a battlefield increasingly dominated by unmanned weapons.
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