China's growing firepower casts doubt on whether U.S. could defend Taiwan

[DonViejo]

In war games, China often wins, and U.S. warships and aircraft are kept at bay.

March 27, 2021, 6:01 AM EDT
By Dan De Luce and Ken Dilanian

WASHINGTON — China's massive arms buildup has raised doubts about America's ability to defend Taiwan if a war broke out, reflecting a shifting balance of power in the Pacific where American forces once dominated, U.S. officials and experts say.

In simulated combat in which China attempts to invade Taiwan, the results are sobering and the United States often loses, said David Ochmanek, a former senior Defense Department official who helps run war games for the Pentagon at the RAND Corp. think tank.

In tabletop exercises with America as the "blue team" facing off against a "red team" resembling China, Taiwan's air force is wiped out within minutes, U.S. air bases across the Pacific come under attack, and American warships and aircraft are held at bay by the long reach of China's vast missile arsenal, he said.

"Even when the blue teams in our simulations and war games intervened in a determined way, they don't always succeed in defeating the invasion," Ochmanek said.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/china-s-growing-firepower-casts-doubt-whether-u-s-could-n1262148

[thucythucy]

1. And yet we spend more on "defense" than China

several times over.

With an annual budget of more than half a trillion dollars you'd think we'd be able to "succeed in defeating the invasion" in almost every possible scenario.

[EX500rider]

2. Big difference between invading a small island 80 miles off your coast..

...and defending one 6,500 miles away.

[thucythucy]

6. We will spend more than 700 billion dollars on the military this fiscal year

and Taiwan is hardly a "small island."

We're not talking about Tarawa or Guam. Taiwan is close to 14,000 square miles, with a good deal of mountainous terrain, a large population and a near state of the art military of its own. It has a population of more than 20 million, a robust industrialized economy, and has had decades to prepare its defenses in conjunction with the US military.

And while the situation is hardly analogous, the English Channel is a rivulet compared to the Formosa Straits, and yet Britain managed to hold out alone against what was then the mot formidable power in military in history.

And what about our vaunted air superiority? Isn't the justification for spending billions and billions each year on new fighter aircraft that our advanced technology supposedly counteracts an opponent's advantage in numbers? In response to the Berlin blockade we were able to deploy a bomber wing to Britain virtually over night. Taiwan has its own air force and major all weather air bases--a rapid fly in shouldn't be all that daunting. At the very least we ought to be able to maintain air superiority in the waters off the island, which should make any landing a highly dangerous undertaking.

Something is very odd here. Either this report is an attempt to gin up yet more military spending--another iteration of "the bomber gap" and "the missile gap" or we've been wasting buckets of money on items extraneous to meeting our strategic needs. Probably some of both.

[rockfordfile]

16. I agree

[Amishman]

3. Operating away from our bases, out on the ocean is a major factor

Even a navy as large as ours is terribly vulnerable when fighting a land based force - as China would be in this scenario.

Honestly Taiwan's best defense is finding a way to ensure that mainland China would take enough collateral damage to make war not worth the cost. Their new long range missile program seems to be a step in that direction.

[thucythucy]

9. Doesn't Taiwan have its own military infrastructure, its own bases,

both air and naval?

Hasn't it had decades to prepare for a possible invasion, preparations with which we've assisted?

What about our vaunted superiority in fighter aircraft--one of the more expensive items in our military budget? These would be operating from bases on the island--minutes if not seconds away from any possible landing beach. It would seem to me any navy operating in those straits would be highly vulnerable to air attack. And our satellite and other intelligence technology--in which we've also invested tens and hundreds of billions of dollars over many decades--should provide ample warning of an imminent invasion.

I wonder if this isn't another leak designed to justify yet more military spending. Either that, or the last four years under Trump have damaged our military far more than is commonly known.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

12. One would think the economic fallout would be a deterrent.

[EX500rider]

13. The number speak for themselves:

China population:1.398 billion
Taiwan: 23.57 million

China GDP: $14.34 trillion
Taiwan: $730.162 billion

Chinese Army estimated 1.6 million troops.
Taiwan:130,000 in the Army


Not surprising Taiwan would need help

[dalton99a]

4. Taiwan should develop its own nuclear deterrent

since there is really no legal obligation for the U.S. to defend them.

They can probably do it within two years (perhaps Japan could help them with the rocket technology)

[Johnny2X2X]

8. Um, no

Increasing nukes is never the answer.

[roamer65]

21. Has Taiwan signed the NPT?

If so, then that may not be an option for them.

However, if China keeps getting more belligerent I expect the US will install tactical nukes in Taiwan...if they are not already there...

[pecosbob]

5. I was there a couple of times while in the service

IMO bottom line is we could never have defended Taiwan without going nuclear.

[joetheman]

7. We have bigger fish to fry at home. Time to focus on defending our own democracy!

[thucythucy]

11. Whether or not we should defend Taiwan is a whole other question.

What surprises me is that our ability to do so is in question. If this report is accurate, it seems to indicate much of the money we've poured into the military since the end of the Cold War has been wasted.

[EX500rider]

14. Since the end of the Cold War most US defense money has gone towards..

...irregular warfare in Iraq & Afghanistan, not towards near peer warfare as they call it. Just now starting to pivot back that way.

[thucythucy]

15. Three quarters of a trillion dollars each fiscal year

should enable us to do both.

Remember too that China has a northern border with Russia to defend, a southern border with Vietnam, a southwestern border with India (also a nuclear power) and ongoing unrest in its western most provinces. All of which I would think would limit its ability to devote the bulk of its assets to an all out invasion.

We spend hundreds of billions on military hardware each and every year. The justification for this exorbitant outlay is that it keeps us ahead of any possible adversary on the world stage. And we're not talking here about invading China or engaging in a land war on the continent. We're talking about beating back an invasion force that would have to be assembled in full view of our surveillance satellites, giving us ample warning, which feet would then have to cross nearly a hundred miles of open water. An invasion force would then have to not only establish a beach head in the face of Taiwan's own land forces, but keep that beach head supplied indefinitely.

A single attack submarine should be able to seriously disrupt any invasion fleet. Two or three attack submarines could fatally disrupt their resupply.

And Taiwan's air defense would make an airborne assault just as risky.

If we're now being told that despite our trillions of dollars spent over the last decades we're no match for the Chinese military, which has a budget a fraction of ours--so that we can't sustain an ally fighting a defensive war on its own ground, then perhaps we need to take a long hard look at where all that money has gone.

[EX500rider]

17. I don't think anyone is saying the US is no match for the Chinese military..

Last edited Sat Mar 27, 2021, 07:43 PM - Edit history (2)

...but that a strike out of the blue might well get them a foothold on Taiwan.
It would take the US time to get enough forces in theater.

[thucythucy]

19. Hopefully we'd be able to detect the buildup for such a strike.

Amphibious operations can't just be thrown together at a moment's notice. Assembling the ships and landing craft would most likely be visible to our reconnaissance satellites.

Attack submarines can be stationed within striking distance (and perhaps already are). Fighter squadrons could be flown in from Japan or Guam or from carrier groups in the western Pacific.

If our intelligence services can't give us ample warning about such a strike, I have to ask again, what are we getting for the hundreds of billions we spend on those services each year?

[Johnny2X2X]

10. Military conflict with China is unlikely

China is our adversary, but also our partner. They are happy with the trajectory of the global economy and wouldn’t want eat to screw that up.

Americans are competitive at their core. They don’t seem to get that competition on a global scale isn’t a zero sum game, there isn’t a winner and a loser necessarily. China will be the dominant economic power, but that doesn’t mean the US loses anything tangible, we’ll benefit from this if we position ourselves to gain from the new dynamics.

It’s like if you have $100,000 and your neighbor has $80,000 today and next year you have $125,000, but your neighbor has $150,000. Did you lose?

[rockfordfile]

18. China is a dangerous country, and Russia is a dangerous country.

[JI7]

20. Trump's 4 years in office has made China much more powerful but we can work on building alliances

and through economic policy we can try to make China less powerful .