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Originally Posted by chankya
Further, I would suggest that the Chinese navy having evolved primarily into a sea-denial role would while running to significant losses still be able to able to keep the straits open.
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The problem is while the PLAN has a good number of ships, how many of them will be transfered to the Taiwan theater, should a shooting war happen and the losses are significant? Politically, it's a disaster if the losses exceed a certain amount. A nation has to think about the future. China needs to think about the next 50 years in replacing these assets if PLAN losses are too great.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chankya
While that sounds like a lopsided argument my reasoning is this : The US is not capable of sustaining a high casualty war. (This is not usually a problem since they can bomb a country into the stoneage before the first US soldier actualy sets foot).
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That is very true. The only high casualty scenario that's even plausible is an invasion upon the continental US itself. And that's not gonna happen for a while. We use technology to substitude human lives. That's why our wars are expensive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chankya
An aircraft carrier has a compliment of roughly 3000 sailors. Woudl you really stick it in a rather small area with a lot of hostile submarines? Hence my "sea denial in the taiwan straits = limited sea control" proposition.
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A carrier has 3000+ sailors, and 3000+ for the airwing.
No, we won't stick our carriers in a very small and confined area like the Taiwan strait. The battle group will probbaly station off east coast of Taiwan. There's a large open area for a couple of 100,000t carriers to hide in. Our subs will probably enter the strait to make lives miserable for troop transports.
China might be able to land enough troops and secure a beachhead/port. The problem is to keep them supplied. A brigade engaged in combat consumes quite a bit of fuel and ammo, not to mention food, water, medicine, and evacuating wounded. Without supplies no one fights. Those supplies will be hard to get through to the troops on Taiwan. Then you have to reinforce it and replace the casualties to maintain a unit. This scenario is virtually doomed without complete air and sea superiority and an extremely robust sea lift capability.