China invades Taiwan

[Officer of Engineers]

But lots of others for smaller scale landings. Most countries I'd say you were correct. But Using Ukraine as a template? The 'Great Leader' involved isn't particularity concerned about casualties. Initially at least, so long as ground is taken.

So a bunch of unsupported light inf bns vs entire mech div, if not corps. Chopped liver comes to mind.

[Monash]

There's only 3 beaches suitable for mass landing.

But lots of others for smaller scale landings. Most countries I'd say you were correct. But Using Ukraine as a template? The 'Great Leader' involved isn't particularity concerned about casualties. Initially at least, so long as ground is taken.

[Officer of Engineers]

That's an awful lot of tonnage to sink, Taiwan is a big island with lots of potentially exploitable landing zones, more so on the West coast than the East but even so? Block ships will protect the entrances to ports yes, but all of the beaches?

There's only 3 beaches suitable for mass landing. The PLA might be able to do multiple bn level helo insert/jumps but that essentially means light inf vs entrenched troops with a heavy mech res coming forth.

At best, despite what Eric says, it' still a max of 30K Mainland troops vs 400K pissed off Taiwanese ... and that 30K can be reduced by simple tricks (sunk freighters, Czech hedgehogs, minefields, and field fortifications).

[Monash]

Oh God, Washington, take a hint. The Taiwanese hate the Japanese more than they fear the Chinese. And again, sink a damn freighter before the beaches and the Chinese are kept off shore.

That's an awful lot of tonnage to sink, Taiwan is a big island with lots of potentially exploitable landing zones, more so on the West coast than the East but even so? Block ships will protect the entrances to ports yes, but all of the beaches?

[Officer of Engineers]

Oh God, Washington, take a hint. The Taiwanese hate the Japanese more than they fear the Chinese. And again, sink a damn freighter before the beaches and the Chinese are kept off shore.

[statquo]

https://youtu.be/bFDMh_dyshY

https://youtu.be/MoZv_7KYMkA

The First Battle of the Next War Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan <---- full CSIS report

Analysis of the 24 game iterations showed four necessary conditions to defeat a Chinese invasion.

1. Taiwanese forces must hold the line. Recommendation: Strengthen Taiwanese ground forces. Because some Chinese forces will always land on the island, Taiwanese ground forces must be able to contain any beachhead and then counterattack forcefully as Chinese logistics weaken. However, the Taiwanese ground forces have severe weaknesses. Therefore, Taiwan must fill its ranks and conduct rigorous, combined arms training. Ground forces must become the center of Taiwan’s defense effort.

2. There is no “Ukraine model” for Taiwan. Recommendation: In peacetime, the United States and Taiwan must work together to provide Taiwan with the weapons it needs; in wartime, if the United States decides to defend Taiwan, U.S. forces must quickly engage in direct combat. In the Ukraine war, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have not sent troops directly into combat but have sent massive amounts of equipment and supplies to Ukraine. Russia has been unable to interdict this overland flow. However, the “Ukraine model” cannot be replicated in Taiwan because China can isolate the island for weeks or even months. Taiwan must start the war with everything it needs. Further, delays and half measures by the United States would make the defense harder, increase U.S. casualties, allow China to create a stronger lodgment, and raise the risk of escalation.

3. The United States must be able to use its bases in Japan for combat operations. Recommendation: Deepen diplomatic and military ties with Japan. While other allies (e.g., Australia and South Korea) are important in the broader competition with China and may play some role in the defense of Taiwan, Japan is the linchpin. Without the use of U.S. bases in Japan, U.S. fighter/attack aircraft cannot effectively participate in the war.

4. The United States must be able to strike the Chinese fleet rapidly and en masse from outside the Chinese defensive zone. Recommendation: Increase the arsenal of long-range anti-ship cruise missiles. Bombers capable of launching standoff, anti-ship ordnance offer the fastest way to defeat the invasion with the least amount of U.S. losses. Procuring such missiles and upgrading existing missiles with this anti-ship capability needs to be the top procurement priority.

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Also found this interesting in relation to point 4 of the above:


3,600 American Cruise Missiles Versus The Chinese Fleet: How One U.S. Munition Could Decide Taiwan’s Fate

A Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a war drawing involving two million Chinese troops, half a million Taiwanese troops and the combined fleets and air forces of the United States and Japan.

It would be the “ultra-mega,” to borrow a phrase from Ian Easton, an analyst with the Virginia-based Project 2049 Institute.

China has some key advantages going into this possible ultra-mega war. Compared to China, Taiwan is tiny, poor and isolated. China can mass its best troops, ships and planes along a short geographic front and attack at the time of its choosing. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force has aimed thousands of missiles at the closest American and Japanese bases. To intervene, U.S. and Japanese forces must fight their way through these missiles as well as the PLA Navy’s submarines.

But Taiwan can win, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. CSIS recently ran a series of war games simulating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2026 and varying degrees of U.S. and Japanese intervention. “In most scenarios, the United States/Taiwan/Japan defeated a conventional amphibious invasion by China and maintained an autonomous Taiwan,” CSIS analysts Mark Cancian, Matthew Cancian and Eric Heginbotham explained in their summary of the war games.

One weapon in particular was decisive in the scenarios where Taiwan and its allies prevailed: the American Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, a stealthy, air-launched cruise missile that’s compatible with an array of USAF and USN warplanes.

Specifically, it was the extended-range JASSM-ER that helped to win the war, by sinking most of the Chinese fleet over the course of two bloody weeks starting with the first Chinese rocket barrage on Taiwanese bases.

“The JASSM ... is a special case,” the Cancians and Heginbotham wrote. “Its long-range precision guidance and stealthy characteristics make it an important munition for the United States.”

The reasons for the JASSM’s importance are obvious. A war over Taiwan begins and ends at sea. First, a Chinese transport fleet—combining scores of navy amphibious ships and potentially hundreds of civilian vessels—must cross the hundred-mile-wide Taiwan Strait and land Chinese troops on Taiwanese beaches or offload them at whatever ports Chinese special forces can capture in the early hours of the conflict.

While fighting rages in Taiwanese towns and cities and along its strategic mountain highways, a powerful American-Japanese naval force should—assuming U.S. and Japanese leaders make good on their promises to defend Taiwan—assemble then sail toward the embattled island country, aiming to cut the PLA’s supply lines and restore the Taiwanese military’s own supply.

Any weapon that can blunt the Chinese landing and safeguard the later U.S.-Japanese intervention is a potential war-winner. As the CSIS analysts ran, modified and reran their simulation, 24 times with different assumptions baked in, they quickly learned that JASSM was that war-winning weapon. In the iterations of the game where Taiwan and its allies won the war, “the JASSM had a decisive impact on outcomes.”

In CSIS’s “base scenario”—seemingly the most likely one—tens of thousands of people died on both sides of an intensive, two-week war. The Taiwanese air force and navy blinked out of existence amid powerful Chinese rocket barrages. The Americans lost two aircraft carriers, several other warships and submarines and nearly 300 aircraft.

But China’s losses were far greater, and more important to the war’s outcome. Nearly 140 Chinese ships sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, including most of the transport ships hauling and supplying the invasion force. While American submarines accounted for many of the sinkings, it’s the bombers—USAF B-1s, B-2s and B-52s armed with JASSM-ERs and flying from bases well outside the range of Chinese missiles—that inflicted the most destruction.

This is exactly what USAF planners and Lockheed Martin had in mind when they conceived of, developed and deployed the JASSM, and later the JASSM-ER, starting in the late 1990s. The original, 14-foot JASSM—with its 1,000-pound warhead, GPS and inertial navigation and infrared seeker—entered USAF service in 2003. The subsonic JASSM ranges just 230 miles, but its stealthy shape helps it to avoid detection and interception.

Despite some hiccups in development, JASSM is an effective weapon. But it’s the JASSM-ER that U.S. forces are counting on to win a war with China. By lightening the missile’s frame and rearranging its components to make more room for fuel, Lockheed doubled its range without adding much to its $1.3-million unit cost.

JASSM-ER debuted in 2018. The USAF is buying the new missiles as quickly as Lockheed can make them. CSIS projected the service would have more than 3,600 JASSM-ERs in 2026, the year in which its Taiwan war games were set.

That’s enough missiles not only to sink the Chinese fleet, but also to bombard Chinese ports and air bases and further degrade the PLA’s logistics. “With each squadron of 12 bombers carrying around 200 stealthy, standoff [cruise missiles], the United States could rapidly cripple the Chinese fleet and leave the invasion force stranded,” the Cancians and Heginbotham wrote.

But lest anyone in Washington, Tokyo or Taipei prematurely declare victory over Beijing, CSIS’s analysts pointed out one huge uncertainty. It’s unclear just how well JASSM-ER works at sea. Lockheed optimized it for overland strikes, after all. The missile’s infrared seeker expects the contrast and clutter you typically see over dry ground.

Yes, the Pentagon is developing a version of the original JASSM—the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles—with a seeker and warhead optimized for hitting and sinking ships. But this maritime JASSM is too early in its production runs to make a big difference in any near-term conflict. CSIS projected the USAF and USN would have just 450 LRASMs in 2026.

If war breaks out soon, American bombers mostly will launch JASSM-ERs. Taiwan will be counting on those missiles working against ships.

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[Officer of Engineers]

Here's the monkey wrench. Quick dry cement and replacement dishes. Great you killed the runway and flatten a few dishes but you've got nothing left to kill the sappers and field dishes.

[astralis]

Explain your reasoniong to me please. At last count, there are 1700 SRBMs to IRBMs that the Chinese can used on Taiwan. We did 2000 sorties on the first day of the Kuwait War and 1000+ sorties a day for the next 30 days. During the Kosovo War, we did 400+ sorties per day for the entire campaign. Hell, we had 600+ cruise missile attacks on Baghdad day 1 of the Iraq War. And Taiwan is a much target richer environment. Thus, the PLARF becomes a non-player by day 3 ... unless they expend rockets like the Russians ... which amounts to didly squat in taking out counter-force targets.

This is why I’m saying PLAAF air superiority vs air dominance like most of my colleagues. PLARF likely got enough missiles to knock out stationery radars, C2 and empty out air defense quivers.

ROCAF would likely need to hide in its mountain base to avoid the initial strikes, and more would be lost to attrition as runways and the resulting repair crews are targeted. When the PLAAF come out to play, they will have the benefit of a working SAM shield while Taiwan supporting infrastructure and air defense will likely be attrited.

Taiwan’s advantage here is that a significant chunk of the PLAAF will likely be tasked to A2AD against the Japanese and the Americans vs Taiwan.

ROCAF just needs to have enough surviving combat power to give ROCA the ability to mass and throw the invasion force into the sea, or failing that, turning into a bloody attrition fight on the road to Taipei.

[Officer of Engineers]

against ROCAF under constant Rocket Force attack, with benefit of SAM protection, yeah, PLAAF gets air superiority (not dominance).

Explain your reasoniong to me please. At last count, there are 1700 SRBMs to IRBMs that the Chinese can used on Taiwan. We did 2000 sorties on the first day of the Kuwait War and 1000+ sorties a day for the next 30 days. During the Kosovo War, we did 400+ sorties per day for the entire campaign. Hell, we had 600+ cruise missile attacks on Baghdad day 1 of the Iraq War. And Taiwan is a much target richer environment. Thus, the PLARF becomes a non-player by day 3 ... unless they expend rockets like the Russians ... which amounts to didly squat in taking out counter-force targets.

[Officer of Engineers]

Dear God,

Chinese test pilots pave way for development of latest PLA warplanes | South China Morning Post

The air force has lost more than 2,000 pilots in the past six decades, with 30 of the fatalities being test pilots, according to the PLA ...

However, there is still a gap between the PLA’s test pilots and their American counterparts, many of whom have combat experience. Zhou said it was only four years ago that the PLA Air Force started “stall and spin” flight training – a complex and dangerous manoeuvre regularly used by Russian and American pilots of supersonic fighters.

That's 28 pilots they lost per year. No way in hell does this point to any air superiority over Taiwan.

[Firestorm]

However, from what's been gathered, the RAF pilots are not being asked to take to the air but to review the China AF training procedures and to make recommendations.

I can understand 1 or 2 pilots doing a doctrinal review but 30 ex-RAF pilots? That is tantamount to the Chinese admitting they know squat about modern air war.

Exactly! They wouldn't need 30 pilots for doctrinal review. These guys must have been doing comprehensive training in tactics followed by debriefing and evaluations of training sorties even if they don't fly themselves. Whatever the Chinese knew previously about how NATO air forces prosecute an air war, they sure as hell know a lot more now.

[Officer of Engineers]

I can understand 1 or 2 pilots doing a doctrinal review but 30 ex-RAF pilots? That is tantamount to the Chinese admitting they know squat about modern air war.

[astralis]

Think you can drop the air superiority after the China AF just hired 30 exRAF pilots as consultants for training. 30 pilots? That's a hell of a lot of knowledge the Chinese are missing.

against USAF? PLAAF is toast.

against ROCAF under constant Rocket Force attack, with benefit of SAM protection, yeah, PLAAF gets air superiority (not dominance).

for DoD context, my view is considered rather optimistic. Most people think ROCAF gets blown up on day 1. I don’t believe that, but neither do I think ROCAF can win air control per their doctrine.

[DOR]

Isn't that equally true on the Taiwanese side?

Yes, plus the defender’s advantage.

[Officer of Engineers]

London is putting the legislation in place to void these contracts. However, from what's been gathered, the RAF pilots are not being asked to take to the air but to review the China AF training procedures and to make recommendations.