Taiwan and the “People’s Republic” a Guest Post.

Welcome back to the Scuttlebutt:

 

We have something different this week, a guest post.

 

I was going to run something on the recent purchase of Twitter, the advance of free speech that it promises, and all of the rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth by anyone to even marginal left of center, including most of the investment firms that send me stuff, all betting that Musk will fail, because advertisers are more afraid of the rabid left than of the angry right.
But frankly, everyone that’s paying attention has seen stuff on this, and if you’re not paying attention, you probably don’t read this little page.  So, instead, I’m going to run a piece one of my friends and associates sent me to run as a guest piece.

 

I believe this is the first guest piece I have ever run, which considering I’ve been doing this for at least 5 years, is sort of saying something.

 

Jonathan LaForce is a former Marine, Cook/Pitmaster extraordinaire, author, and friend, who was professionally responsible for little things like oh invading islands, while I was professionally responsible for little things like making all the enemies’ ships into reefs.  As a result, he knows a little bit about the subject:

 

 Amphibious Ops challenges: By Jonathan LaForce.
A lot of people have expressed concern about the potential for an invasion of the Republic of China (ROC) by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). I do not blame folks for this line of thought. The scenario does invoke valid concerns. However, we would be remiss if we did not take the time to examine the scenario and properly quantify it. 
Does the PRC possess the world’s largest combination of military forces? At present, assuming what reports we possess are correct, yes. 
Does the PRC possess a vast quantity of firepower? Again, all things being equal, yes. 
Can the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), PLAN, and PLAAF project power onto foreign shores? Yes and no. That, folks, is where we have to look beyond statistics. 
I will admit upfront, I don’t have certain pieces of knowledge. I am not an expert on amphibious doctrine in all its multifaceted glory. I am not a graduate of any service school which directly addresses such matters, though I do own and have read copies of the course material. What I am is a serious student of history, a veteran of the USMC who put my time in uniform to good use learning, and a man who has paid attention to those more educated than me on these topics over the last 20 years as I have sought to be educated on martial matters. War was my profession, war is my preferred topic of study at all times and in all places, and the lessons from this rich field are highly instructive. 

 

There are three options of invasion available:
Option 1) airborne. 
Option 2) amphibious.
Option 3) a combo of the above. 

 

All have serious risks involved. 
Option 1 
There exist four international airports on the island of Formosa capable of receiving and launching aircraft. Which is what you’ll need to rapidly deploy enough troops to hold those positions. Each airport is a large, complex structure, with a perimeter measured in the thousands of meters. A battalion is not going to cut it, especially since they’ll quickly be facing stiff resistance. You’ll need an infantry regiment for each, so assume 3,000 men per site. 

 

Either all your infantrymen are jumping out the door of a cargo plane as it flies through the air, or try to come busting out of an Airbus hold as it taxis to a stop near the terminal. We’ll assume you packed the hull to max capacity, that you safely delivered 100 men and their gear on target. Thirty aircraft will be necessary, just to deploy one regiment. Overall, you’re looking at 120 cargo planes, packed tighter than a Japanese subway car, flying in formation to their drop zones. Certainly, nobody will notice that moving eastward through the sky. Not at all.  

 

Congrats, you’ve now got your grunts on the ground. You were limited on the weight you could bring over, which means they’ve got personal weapons and ammo, but limited crew-served weapons on hand. All of which will be necessary to maintain an established position when anything with more steel than Elvis Presley’s Cadillac rolls up and starts shooting at you. Please let me know how well you think grunts on bare tarmac are going to fare when the ROC Army starts serving air bursts in 155mm portions overhead? 

 

Capturing the airports alone is not enough. I know you didn’t want to hear that. You’ve got to reinforce those positions and maintain an air bridge. Your cargo planes, if you’re smart, will have enough fuel for the return trip, and yes, they must leave. If they are sitting on the tarmac, they are targets. Unless you want those grunts to stop defending the perimeter and play firefighter, get the planes gone immediately. 

 

*sound of intercom clearing*
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. If you look out either window, you’ll have a front-row seat to the largest air engagement since the Battle of Britain. And I severely doubt the ROC Air Force is going to let us peacefully fly west, back to Western Taiwan. Please assume the upright seated position, put your head between your legs and prepare to kiss your ass goodbye.”

 

Realistically, assume you’re going to lose half the aircraft assigned to each airport. Expect those losses, plan as if 1 in 2 of those planes is not coming back. Otherwise, you’re lying to yourself. 

 

Now that we’ve covered the Taipei Turkey Shoot, let’s have a look at the Formosa Strait Shark Festival.

 

Option 2
Congratulations, you’ve elected to sail to battle! This is a wise choice, as warships and their support elements do not fall out of the sky. Normally.  

 

Before we get to enjoy an ice-cold beer or forty on the smooth sandy beaches of Formosa, we have to consider the prior, pressing, obligations.
Your timetable is not dictated solely by political considerations. You’ve got to pick landing sites based on the right combination of tide, time of day, season, and weather. Had Operation Neptune not set sail in the narrow window available on the 6th of June, the next time available was not for 2 more weeks. And that window has to accommodate everything you’ll need for the initial beachhead plus sufficient supplies to establish piers, docks, and breakwaters. Look at the Mulberry model. Do you have the means to make that possible? You better, if you want to rapidly bring supplies from the waterline to an inland fighting position. Hope your supply clerks and log platoons are good at moving while under fire and know how to use their crew-served weapons properly, otherwise they’re so much dead meat in an ambush. Because, you know, Urban environments are not famous at all for being the death of mechanized formations. 

 

Where was I? That’s right. You’ve pre-staged everything, your artificial docks are cured and ready to move. Great job. Good work. I’m proud of you. 

 

By the way, how are your troops doing? 

 

What’s that? You forgot about them? 

 

Oh son, lemme explain a fact of life to you: men are not boxes. Men are not steel and iron. They are men. Operation Neptune had 24,000 men staged and waiting to go ashore at Normandy. Men far from home, far from comfortable beds, far from good-smelling and curvaceous female companionship, and very far from good food or drink. How long can your NCOs maintain good order and discipline amongst idle men, eating rations and smelling each other’s BO for hours without reprieve, before they start making comments at the officers? How long before tempers flare under the emotional pressure and men with automatic weapons lash out in the heat of the moment? Private Tang decides he’s had it up to here with Private Chang taking his hard-earned renminbi at the impromptu pai gow tournament, so he decides to settle the matter with his service rifle’s giggle switch set to “donkey show.” Private Tang empties the magazine. Private Chang plus a dozen poor onlookers get treated to the PLA’s infamous Unhealthcare plan. Got that mental image firmly affixed in your mind, right?
Good.

 

I want you to remember this hypothetical. Because it too is a reality. Once you lose good order and discipline, all you’ve got is an angry mob. Mob rules make for a great song, and utter piss for a martial force.

 

So, you’ve made the weather call, you’ve got everything loaded, staged, and the troops are primed. You’re crossing over 100 kilometers of open ocean. 130 at the minimum, 180 at the widest. That’s a lot of space for Very Bad Things to happen. 

 

Each wave of transports has a specific role. The first is going ashore to create a beachhead, the second is reinforcing that initial position. In fact, it might take several waves to fully secure that initial hold. Look to Tarawa and Saipan for the utter mess that can be made of plans.

 

Once you’ve got the initial perimeter and a “safe” place at each location for engineers to build a temporary pier/dock, they’ll be coming in. By now your enemy is going to be fully aware of your presence. They will make probes at your perimeter. You’ve got to continue bringing in reinforcements or you’re going to run out of grunts. Who, by the way, are hungry, thirsty, sore, bleeding, angry, and tired. Forget Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed running across the sand. The average man going ashore weighs 160 pounds and is wearing that much weight again in equipment and clothing. 

 

Yes. Really. 

 

Look, if you don’t believe me, we have complete lists of what the men who went ashore at Utah, Omaha, Juno, and Gold were carrying on their backs. Read ‘Currahee’ or ‘Band of Brothers’ for what the paras were wearing when they jumped in the night before. Those poor bastards on the beach are playing a lethal game measured in inches, and they know the only way they’ll see sunset is if they get off the mother luvin beach. The enemy knows it too. And they get a vote in this scenario.
Let’s talk about delivery. Once your big, wide, slow troopships have been filled to capacity with troops and supplies, an act which we know absolutely nobody to the east would’ve noticed at all, an evolution where absolutely nothing goes ever wrong, they will leave their harbors to cross the strait of Formosa, preferably under cover of darkness to limit optical observation. Do we see the list of variables stacking up? 

 

I hope so. 

 

Because I’m about to add another one- how many ships will make it across the strait. You need to expect that the invasion force will get spotted somewhere during its preparatory loading. If you think the ROC Navy won’t try to intercept your surface fleets, you are very badly mistaken. Never mind the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet, stationed in Japan. They are still the Big Man on the Block in that part of the world. 

 

Go ahead, ChiCommieBoos, rant all you want in the comment section or your scripted bot replies on Quora, tell yourself you’ve got a bigger navy than the United States of America. Last time I checked we have more tonnage in storage than you have currently sailing. Seethe over it. Cope over it. Go sit in the corner and cry at your pictures of that bad haircut that rivals his limpid fashion sense. I’m sorry, I meant to say that fat vainglorious child-raping sack of filth which is Mao Sucks Donkey Dong. 

 

Pardon me, I had that in the margins of my notes. 

 

If the US Navy, specifically Seventh Fleet, wanted to cover themselves with glory, let us look no further than an attempted invasion of Taiwan, courtesy of the PRC, by sea. The Formosa Strait would play host to the largest open water engagement since Surigao or Savo Island. USN Surface warfare officers dream of such scenarios. Submariners too. 

 

(Interjection by the host, YES, WE DO.  It’s been a long time since anyone received a Combat Patrol Pin, and they look so cool on the uniform, especially when it’s easy targets.  Figure to lose at least 30 ships just to torpedoes, MINIMUM.)

 

The collective lot of them would be entirely too happy to oblige you. Their erections will last well after they get delivered to the old sailors’ home in old age. 

 

Taking a step back, let us assume you’ve made it across the Strait. You are now staring at an empty beach. But you’re 3,000 meters offshore. Those angry, hot, sweaty, vomiting men in the hold are not going to walk from the ship to the shore. This means you need to transfer them to a platform with a shallow draft that can run into shore. Because this is the PLAN, you lack the means to load troops any way except the same method used for hundreds of years. 

 

Park the Higgins boat (LCVP) beside the troopship, drop a cargo net down, and the troops will go down the rope ladder to the waiting LCVP. Simple! Except we’re talking about scaling a multi-story height, transferring from one ship moving simultaneously through several dimensions at once, to a smaller vessel doing the exact same thing, independent of the larger ship and much more violently while the Coxswain is trying to maintain steerage. 

 

The men doing this are sick, tired, overburdened, puking, scared and unless they have practiced this particular series of dance steps oodles of times, it is going to be a disaster. We here in America would call this “YouTube-worthy.” 

 

Did I mention taking fire? 

 

No? 

 

Oh shucks, I forgot. You’re likely going to be taking fire at the same time. The captains of those big, slow troopships will be anxious to leave with all haste. Hope you’ve spent time training the captains not to jump the gun on that. Meanwhile, men are breaking hands, arms, and noses, as they sway on the ropes. Some men are losing their balance and falling onto the open deck of their LCVPs. Look out, that’s 160 pounds of human being plus 160 pounds of equipment. It doesn’t stop gently when falling from a height onto that most forgiving of substances- a pitching metal deck. Perhaps if Private Tang is lucky, some of his squadmates will break his fall for him. With their bodies. 
We, the US, learned a plethora of lessons from WW2, as well as WW1’s British fiasco which was Gallipoli. Our current amphibious assault carriers reflect this knowledge and learning- we can do the loading of troops inside the carrier’s hull, in a well deck constructed for this purpose. Forgot scrambling up and down rope nets, our guys can get in their Amtracs and ride to the beach, where they will unass. relatively dry. 

 

Let us suppose your craft have gone ashore and dropped off the first round of grunts. We’ll assume that both are encountering moderate resistance. Your craft will be getting shot at as they drive across the water, back to the mothership. Your grunts will be fighting for their lives across sand.

 

If you don’t maintain fire support for the grunts, they’ll get stuck on the beaches as they take contact. If the training has not been good enough, if discipline breaks, they will stall out. Meanwhile, you’ll have the Republic of China performing a call up of reservists and any existing national militia, in a manner fit to wake ancestors dead since before the Ming dynasty got busy busting heads. If you had light resistance before, you’ll have moderate resistance forming to contest and counter-assault your lead elements now. Meanwhile, the fat-ass tankers will be rolling out of their garrisons, at which point they can engage both the amtracs, the grunts, and any naval vessels which stray too close to shore. The same goes for unfriendly artillery coming from the ROC Army. It will be chaos all around, but the majority of outgoing fire is going to be headed towards the PLA and PLA-N. 

 

Where is your air support, you ask? What has happened to the vaunted PLAAF? Well, while the ROC Navy may not possess Aegis Combat Systems (yet), the USN’s Seventh Fleet does. The US Navy also operates the world’s second-largest Air Force, after the US Air Force. And the USN has not shown an interest in letting the PRC come across the Formosa strait, underwater or above it in a long damn time. The PLAAF will be justifying the last 50 years of budget fights and weapons development because if the second-rate knockoffs of 80s-era Russian equipment can be defeated with 80s-era technology, imagine what an introduction to the 21st century will involve. Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer will make a movie about it. Ray-Ban will run out of aviator frame sunglasses to sell.

 

Option 3
Well, let’s just go for broke why don’t we? Launch an amphibious invasion and an airborne assault all at once. Surely this will overwhelm the ROC before a proper defense can be mounted. Nope. Remember, if it’s chaotic for the enemy, it’s chaotic for you. 

 

Tell me how you can maintain 4 hot drop zones, fighter cap for your cargo planes, air support for your amphibious assault, anti-shipping interdiction, submarine hunters, and run the largest naval surface engagement since Task Force 77.2 told Nishimura’s Southern Force “Hippity hoppity, get off my property” then backed it up with 16-inch naval artillery. 

 

Tell me how you’re going to train for that event, be honest enough with yourselves and your superiors about the state of your readiness, and break through the cultural memes which have restricted Chinese culture for millennia. 

 

Tell me how you’re going to stage for that event, keeping the Tibetan-mountain-sized flow of men and materials a secret so secure that the Republic of China or the US don’t find out what you’re doing.

 

Tell me how you’ll keep them from responding long enough to seize control of, conquer, then solidify your grip on Taiwan, without being bled dry. 

 

Tell me how you’re going to keep the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force from getting involved- they’ve already stated publicly their intention to assist in the defense of Taiwan from hostile action on the part of the PRC. Because if there were ever an event that would spike Japanese nationalism straight back to the Meiji era, which would resurrect Isoroku Yamamoto’s IJN any harder or faster, I don’t know that it exists.

 

Go ahead. Tell me. I’ll wait. 

 

Finale
It is entirely possible that Xi Jinping and his lackeys could choose to assume the port of Mars. But he didn’t get to be premier by being stupid. Evil does not equal stupid. However, as we’ve seen with Vladimir “32 days to flatten Ukraine” Putin, evil men can and do make bad choices, based on the bad data provided by subordinates worried more about loss of face or status than ensuring their soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are properly prepared for armed conflict; that the enemy’s present status is not a repeat of your own propaganda campaigns; that there is domestic support for engaging in such efforts. 

 

I’m not going to hold my breath while I wait, I’ve got better things to do. But I see no reason to run around a la Chicken Little, screaming that the sky is falling. That is senseless and foolish. Your time, my time, is all spent more profitably in other pursuits. I suggest we do so. 

 

Well, I think Jonathan is maybe a little more optimistic about the logical, and analytical capabilities of the PRC leadership, in the face of a desperate desire by Winnie the Shit to be seen to have “reunited China” and to “assume the mantle of Mao” than I am.  I don’t recommend going all “Chicken Little” but I do recommend taking a page from the old Romans.  Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum.  No need to panic, but keep your troops prepared.  I’ve said before that what we really need to do, is to put a small (battalion or so) detachment of US Marines in Taiwan, to conduct “training.”

 

Yes, it would piss off China.
I’m tired of hearing “Oh my Gods, we don’t want to piss off China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran!”

 

They don’t seem to have ANY consideration for “Oh no, we don’t want to piss off the United States and SEATO.”  Maybe it’s time they worry about making us angry, instead of the other way around.

 

Take care, watch your six,
Until next time I remain,
Yours in service.
William Lehman.

16 Comments

  1. Mr LaForce goes into the top level reasons why it’s hard. But let’s not forget that not all islands are the same and it gets better (or worse if you are the PRC) when you get into the details of geography,

    Taiwan is basically a big mountain range with a skirt of flatter land around it (more on the West side). It could hardly be designed better for resistance operations – something that every single invader in the past 500 years has discovered – the Dutch, the Imperial Chinese, the Japanese, the KMT… Now eventually most of these invaders succeeded, but they didn’t when someone else was supporting the resistance, and even when the resistance was on its own it took a while and a fair number of corpses. So even if you can get a foothold on the island, expanding to get the whole island is going to be a long drawn out process.

    But don’t worry, getting the foothold is also impacted by geography as even the skirt of “flatter land” is distinctly bumpy.

    The two airports near Taipei – which are the ones you have to use for the air assault assuming you want to conquer the capital city – have nice little mountains overlooking them. The more downtown one (Songshan) is so obviously going to be a deathtrap, you aren’t going to land troops there. Even if you fake a couple of A380s full of troops ready to go you won’t get any more assuming the Taiwanese have any kind of AA fire nearby. And even then, if there’s any artillery at all in those hills they can take out anything in or around the airport with one ranging shot, an easy visual confirmation of hit and then full battery fire. Seriously go look at google maps with the topo view. Plus the same hypothetical artillery in those hills can also shell anywhere in Taipei because pretty much the entire city is within 5 miles of them so even if you break out from the airport you can’t escape the artillery. And no you can’t land some paratroopers in those hills to take out the defenses. Well, you can land them, but most of them are going to end up dangling from the tops of trees with broken limbs so they won’t be doing a great deal of fighting because those hills are forested (see google maps satellite view and street view of some of the small roads)

    So you try for the further one, Taoyuan, which also has hills a couple or three miles away but isn’t quite so obviously a death trap. It also makes a tad more sense, since it’s right by the coast so potentially it can function as part of the beach head for the naval invasion force.

    So let’s assume that you manage somehow to take the airport, and make a landing nearby and put several thousand troops on the ground. Lets also assume you have somehow got air superiority and decent naval resupply. Even with all that, you now have to fight either through some steep, forested, hills to get to Taipei or go south through built up bits of Taoyuan, in range of artillery in those hills, all the way to the big river and then go down that to get to Taipei, and going down the river you are also, guess what? in range of artillery in the hills either side

    I mean yes, you could do it. If you have a million men to spare – and technically you probably do if you are the PRC – and a way to get them onto the beachhead quickly with lots of tanks etc. But unless you know you have air superiority and good naval logistics, any force that you send via Taoyuan to Taipei is going to make the Russian advance on Kyiv look like a tactical success with low loss of life.

    And don’t forget that you will need to not just establish your own naval access route, you have to blockade the island so that it doesn’t get resupply via Okinawa, which isn’t very far away (the closest island with a runway is Ishigaki ~150 miles away). Attacking that island or the shipping around it or the other closer islands to Taiwan will of course cause the Japan SDF forces to get involved in addition to the USN. The JMSDF is the third largest navy in Asia (the world?) and hasn’t forgotten the traditions and institutional knowledge of its parent the IJN

    Really the PRC will find it far easier to invade Manchuria

    • Thank you, Francis,
      That is information I didn’t have, and I don’t think Jonathan did either. I know it’s silly, but I’ve never looked at a topo of the island, much less been there. If the terrain is at all as you describe, I almost wish the PRC would try to invade, just so that they could get the same bloody nose Russia is getting… But of course, they, like Russia, might just decide that “If I can’t have it, no one will.” Ignoring the fact that the first person to throw a nuke is more than likely to get an overwhelming response… So, in the end, I hope that they look at the math and decide it’s just not worth it.

  2. Thank you both for very enlightening articles. Parts of each I may have known but you both pulled it together professionally.

  3. I agree with most of his analysis. Yet, the response of the US is very dependent on the party in political power in DC when /if an invasion of Taiwan happens. Additionally, you have to consider the groundwork the PRC would invest in leading up to an invasion of Taiwan. The years in Viet Nam were punctuated by student demonstrations across our country. This led to a loss of support of the military. Coming home to the US & seeing protestors at the airport had a major negative impact on American troops returning home. Most of the “heavy lifting” in an Taiwan-invasion scenario would have to be done by the Taiwanese themselves. Much like the Ukrainian military has done, Taiwanese resistance must have a Taiwanese face, albeit with an American shadow in the background. Which also means constant & consistent training for Taiwanese military officers & enlisted personnel, by highly trained “contractors” with military skills & foreign language capabilities.
    FYI, I am related to the author & a fan of his writing. Likewise, I have zero military experience or military training.

  4. Terrific analysis. Would make great mil fiction.
    But it’s about 7 years out of date.
    For starters, there’s no way the US mil is getting involved in any fight w the Chicoms over Taiwan. Our military has been under attack by politically correct and CRT rabid psychos since 2009 at least. As much as the author likes to mock the Russkies, the US mil didn’t distinguish itself w that Afghanistan exit. The US hasnt had a win against a first class military since 1945. Korea was a draw. After that we settled for picking on 2nd and 3d rate patsies.

    Second, we live under occupation government. There’s no reason we should be fighting for Taiwan or Ukraine when the illegitimate Regime in DC is literally paying millions of invaders to cross our open southern border while setting up a Ministry of Truth while locking up political prisoners who protested on January 6th while letting Blmtifa thugs burn selected cities while forcing Americans to be human Guinea pigs for an experimental gene therapy. This ain’t America. No one in the military should be doing anything for this Regime.

    • That response is, at best badly conceived, but entirely understandable. It’s easy to fall into black pilled depression if you’re not careful:

      1. The CRT nonsense was started well before that. I started high school in 2001 and saw it there. The military has likely been dealing with it since Clinton’s second term.
      2. The US Military distinguished itself quite gallantly during a withdrawal led by politicians with no clue what they’re doing (who should’ve taken a note from the Japanese and expiated the shame of their actions posthaste. The politicians that is.)
      3. Since Korea we’ve engaged:
      North Vietnam (a professional, capable army who we never lost a major tactical engagement with (see again: politicians losing wars at the table versus the battlefield);
      won the Cold War against the USSR (aka World War III);
      defeated Iraq at a time when they were full of veteran troops from their recent conflict against Iran (and accordingly rated the 3rd or 4th most capable army on the planet at the time);
      A rebuilt Iraq even more soundly than before while also maintaining successful combat operations in a separate campaign (Afghanistan);
      Prevented any significant terror attacks by AQ since September 2001.
      4. The hyperbole in your last paragraph is astounding.
      -Until any of it can be proven otherwise, NO we do not “live under an occupation government.”
      -No, the Democrat Party is not paying millions of invaders to cross our southern border.
      -the Ministry of Truth already got shot down in flames. As it should be. I will not bother to piss on its grave.
      -The next two are problems, but unsurprising and hardly a symbol of “regime.” This is flavor is really “desperate idiots trying to maintain the illusion of power.” They’re doing an okay job but unraveling at a fairly quick rate.
      -Experimental gene therapy? Pardon me, I’m waiting for my eyes to quit rolling backward. If you said “flawed vaccine dispersion, you’d be better off. Gene therapy? Now you’re being silly.”
      -This is still the United States of America. Warts and all.
      -We, the US Military do not serve the executive office. We are sworn to protect the constitution of these United States. Big difference. And while this country stands, it is our sworn duty to ensure its continued existence against all enemies. I am a father with four children. Which of them should I stop protecting and providing for simply because I don’t like the executive branch right now?
      5. Quit sucking down black pills and listening to propaganda. Seriously, try it. I did because I know it plays to emotional responses and feelings. I can very quickly fall into depression listening to that stuff. Instead I limit my exposure to news, and anything even remotely resembling biased media. Turn down the volume, turn off the TV, and limit your time on social media. That’s what I do.

      • Jonathan,
        I didn’t even bother to discuss it with him, he wasn’t worth the waste of my valuable time, being an obvious tinfoil hat case, but good on you for picking up the challenge. Not that I think any of it will sink in, but hey, one can lead a jackass to knowledge, one can not make him think.

  5. Jonathan, William, great analysis, but somewhat flawed. Let me see if I can add to it.

    There are eleven airfields in Taiwan that can (eight that do) support military operations. Unfortunately, eight of those are on the western side of the island. Two of the three on the eastern side have a strong military component, however, including F-16 fighter aircraft. There are also two ports on the western side with military ships assigned.

    Before we stopped supplying advanced weapons to Taiwan, we gave them dozens of Hawk missile batteries. I doubt seriously that the Taiwanese have failed to duplicate them, perhaps even improved them. Both the Japanese and Korean governments have sold artillery systems to Taiwan, including counter-battery radars.

    Speaking of Korea, don’t assume they’ll sit out the fight, especially the navy portion of any invasion defense.

    The Chinese have a large fleet of amphibious ships, including tank landing ships (LSTs), mostly copies of Russian vessels. They will probably end up rusting out on the shores of Taiwan’s beaches following the first artillery exchange.

    Something else to consider is that Taiwan has two nuclear reactors. They have the means and the capabilities of developing tactical nuclear weapons. Both Shanghai and Xiamen are within range of F-16s. The loss of either city would be catastrophic to the PRC. Any first-use by the PRC would probably see both cities destroyed.

  6. I responded to Jonathan in a DM because he’s a friend but..I’ll cut and paste it to here too.
    I agree with you by and large as far as actual invasion of taiwan goes. By and large except for your analysis ignores two factors. the current major unrest in China and it’s impending economic collapse if the peons keep protesting and pulling runs on the banks. [which is what the peons are doing right now over real estate chicanery] The Chicoms NEED a distraction for their people. What’s the easiest distraction for them? A nice short victorious little war to regain taiwan. Note, having looked at their line up of ships? 7th fleet would go thru them like shit thru a goose. I don’t hold my breathe or think their invasion will succeed. However it doesn’t mean the PRC won’t throw away people and resources to TRY, again to try and give the people an outside evil or agitation. Of course whether 7th fleet really gets froggy with the chicoms depends on just how far our own corrupt blutocrats are willing to go in ignoring their duties [which they are doing wholesale here at home’] and our treaty obligations. Which considering their festering willful and malicious stupidity here at home. gives me no hope for obligating our treaty obligation. Because our current political, deluded, so called “masters” do not have any sense of honor.
    The irritating part to me is…if Trump were still in office…the chinese wouldn’t have made the threat and if they did, Trump probably would have said something along the lines of “you want to kill one of our political leaders? Doing so is an overt act of war. bring it.” Quietly he’d probably also be hoping for them to take Pelosi out…I know I would. I loathe that harridan.

  7. If China attacks Taiwan, Taiwan is not limited to defensive moves. Taiwan has the aircraft and missiles needed to breach the Three Gorges Dam. It’s at the outer limits of range, but it could be done. Boom! China is out of business. Even if the strikes just take out the electrical distribution without breaching the dam, China’s in trouble. There are two dams much closer. The Jinshuitan Dam and the Xinfengjiang Dam. Take either or both out and China has serious problems. All are legitimate targets should Taiwan be attacked.

    • Fantastic points. I didn’t look at the range to reach the three Gorges, which was silly of me, as I have said repeatedly that if I were in charge and the balloon went up with China, I would blow the 3G dam, place a full air and sea cap (if it flies or floats, it dies, to include EVERYTHING, no passenger aircraft, no fishing boats, nothing is safe from us) maybe stage some limited objective raids against ports, maybe insert some Green Beanies and a lot of air-dropped weapons & ammunition to the Uyghurs, and other minorities… Then wait for China to sue for peace.

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