MY LATEST COLUMN: Time For The Taiwan Porcupine To Bristle Taiwan must become a very hard target.

Aircraft and missiles alone won’t defeat a CCP invasion. Stopping Beijing will require a bitter ground battle against invading ground forces – amphibious and airborne.

In January the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released a study titled “The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan.”

Well conducted wargames are serious exercises in possible futures, with the goal of gleaning insights that help the gamers positively shape the future. I know something about high-level games. From 1989-1993 I was a special adviser in strategic wargaming in the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense.

The CSIS game is seriously flawed. My criticism is technical. The game is built around “3.5 day” turns – each turn represents 84 hours. Study classic amphibious operations like Gallipoli and D-Day and you’ll know the first three to four hours of the invasion are critical.

However, the game’s output has several points Taiwan, the U.S., and all U.S. allies must consider.

A bit more: “The island has elements of a porcupine defense. In 2002 I got a tour of Taiwanese bunkers on the west side and a look at an airbase on the east coast whose hangars were in a mountain.”

Read the column for some of the CSIS game team’s recommendations and my comments.

RELATED: Photo of an F-16V (“Viper”) — an updated model of the F-16. Taiwan has about 140 F-16s. Around 70 have been upgraded and there are plans to upgrade more. Taiwan also has at least 66 F-16V aircraft on order. They are fine airplanes. But to defeat a Chinese communist invasion the island must become a fortress.