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| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| How We Would Fight China | |
| 2005-05-08 | |
The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was ...
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #36 Did you ever see a pup roll over and wave its feet in the air? That'll be Taiwan. Guys, the KMT was in Peking!!! Chang is roatating in his grave over it, but the enemy of communist China for the last 50 years went to Peking. There's so much trade and interdependent capital invested that all China has to do is make a big enough show. Let the industrialists in Taiwan save face by claiming it was overwhelming and inevitable. |
| Posted by: Chuck Simmins 2005-05-08 21:36 |
| #35 Left out Brazil, AP. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2005-05-08 21:13 |
| #34 All the Chinese need to take Taiwan is a friendly/socialist government in the USA. No one gets hurt. Wonder this time how they will funnel their billions into the 2008 elections, this time to get the government that will look the other way? |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-05-08 20:33 |
| #33 LOL - think a 100 mile string of burning 55 gallon drums of oil might have some effect on the Zodiac Flotilla™? Jeeesh. What a lowtech solution.... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-05-08 20:22 |
| #32 Parent Teacher Organizastion , it's usually on Thursday evenings, everybody that's anybody would be stuck in a media centre somewhere in East Twinfick. Have you also noticed that all the good reference works on Zodiacs Massed to Invade are missing? Can you see now? |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-05-08 20:02 |
| #31 US Patent and Trademark Office? Ship, youse not making sense. Please explain. |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-05-08 17:45 |
| #30 Better yet, how about 10,000 inflatable bulletproof Zodiacs using the cloak of hard-to-see on a dark and stormy night created by Sun-Mat-Sins secret Stormy Night 'O Darkness Machine. It would be on a Thursday during the U.S. PTO Meeting. We wouldn't have a chance. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-05-08 17:33 |
| #29 Anybody got a list of Chinese pilots who have landed on a carrier at night in heavy seas? There are more than 10. Luckily they are/were employed by the only navy that matters. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-05-08 17:29 |
| #28 Phil, that presuposses there are people on them. They may be, at some initial point. So, the issue is to figure out how to remove them. |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-05-08 17:24 |
| #27 Moose, Just a thought experiment... What do you think would happen when, at the same time that China is attempting to invade Taiwan, the dams on Yellow River would burst open? |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-05-08 17:19 |
| #26 How about 10,000 inflatable Zodiacs. No infrastructure to launch and missiles useless against them. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-05-08 17:15 |
| #25 Was it Kublai-Khan that lost his entire fleet in East China Sea, I believe about 70,000 men? At the time, the Chinese ships were superior to to anything else in the world. One typhoon type of storm and the Kublai-Khan's dream about conquering the world evaporated. Well, we do have Haliburton tectonic generator, but do we have something to generate a typhoon? Maybe a small tsunami may do. |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-05-08 17:10 |
| #24 The very essense of military strategy is doing things your enemy thinks are impossible. The French knew with certainty that the Vietnamese could not lift artillery up the mountains ringing Dien Bien Phu, "It just couldn't be done." Or, for that matter, the retreat at Dunkirk, in which 165,000 men were evacuated in what was thought was going to be a major defeat. So the question is raised, If the Chinese *were*, *somehow*, to get a major force on the ground in Taiwan, is there anything the US could do (not just militarily, but politically), not to stop it, but to *reverse* it? The prospect here is a corridor, filled with every conceivable type of ship, all in turn filled with soldiers. Calculate the time of crossing, then calculate if they were willing to accept 75% casualties *to win*. How many *available* US aircraft would be needed to prevent 10,000 ships from reaching a missile-devastated Taiwan? |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-05-08 16:50 |
| #23 Regarding an amphibious/flotilla invasion of Taiwan, what insures its success? Dumb WWII-type sea mines in the Straits on the general approaches, Harpoon & Penguin missiles, plus F16s means that any Chicom assault simply results in Chinese takeout for all the sharks in the area. Also, once that vast flotilla gets into artillery range {even before the pre-registered beaches}, all those ships start going boom. Then once the landing craft start for shore, the pre-registered artillery on the beaches comes into play. And that does not even account for the shore emplacements, mobile light armour strike forces, or hasty defenses. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2005-05-08 15:56 |
| #22 Moose, the problem with that scenario is that almost everyone in govt to the public will then believe that China INTENTIONALLY nuked the US (even if its through a 3rd party, even if we find no evidence of China's involvement) just to provide a distraction. In that kind of situation I'd shudder to think what our response would be but you can almost 100% guarantee a full on economic blockade that includes sinking commercial ships trying to dock into Chinese ports. Sink a few and no one will be willing to underwrite any shipping to China. From there you can pretty much say economic meltdown and the taking of Taiwan would have been a pyrrhic victory. |
| Posted by: Valentine 2005-05-08 15:45 |
| #21 I can't get the link to work but here's an interesting comparison to Normandy including an overlay map: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/taiwan-d-day.htm |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-05-08 15:42 |
| #20 'Moose, I usually leave the military analysis to the posters who actually understand which end the bullet comes out of, but I gotta say the Chinese flotilla scenario doesn't do much for me. Getting even a small invasion force across the Formosa Strait would require skills that AFAIK the Chinese haven't mastered or even practiced. Again AFAIK, the last amphibious operation was the Brits invading the Falklands in 1982, and even the Brits, who have a substantial history of carrier operations and amphibious assaults, took (by the standards of that war) substantial casualties when someone forgot to tell the Welsh Guards to get the hell off the ship. Put the shoe on the other foot: how risky would it be for the US Marines, the world's premier experts on amphibious operations, to launch a cross-channel attack from Taiwan? |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-05-08 15:24 |
| #19 Jackal: One possible scenario would be to first create a distraction, and then flood Taiwan with soldiers. How many would be enough? Five million? Ten million? And not garrisoned like soldiers, but intersperced throughout the population. Intellectually speaking, it could be seen as "spending assets profusely in a war of economy". As example, the Pacific fleet just happens to be several days away when some horrific disaster happens in the US, say a nuclear bomb goes off in San Diego. Within an hour or two all of America's attention is focused on the event, and the entire US is in a totally *defensive* mode, as it was on 9-11. And then a massive missile barrage attacks Taiwan, followed by a massive floatilla, screened by every anti-aircraft ship they can muster to keep US fleet aircraft away from the floatilla, even giving up their entire coastal defense to protect the floatilla corridor. They would figure that it would be days or weeks before the US would even start to think of Taiwan. In this way, China gets at least 1-2 million soldiers into the already shocked Taiwan, then by the time the US fleet draws near enough to intervene, the Chinese military just evaporates. What does the US do? Re-invade Taiwan? |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-05-08 14:20 |
| #18 But... but.... but... The chinese are our *friends*! They are a big contributer to I'm sure that missle tech. I gave them would never be used for non-peaceful uses. They are as honest as the North Koreans.... |
| Posted by: Billary Clinton 2005-05-08 14:05 |
| #17 More like famous Swedish linebackers. |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-05-08 13:57 |
| #16 Anybody got a list of Chinese pilots who have landed on a carrier at night in heavy seas? Is that one of those books like "Great Swedish Humorists of the 20th Century" or something? :) |
| Posted by: eLarson 2005-05-08 13:36 |
| #15 The Chicoms would not do a head-on assault. They may use more finesse. Bill Gertz suggested that they do something like nuclear blackmail from ports in Panama (which are operated by a chinese sympathizer or front company Hutchinson-Wampoa). The Chicoms are also cultivating relationships with Castro and Chavez. Why go through the front door when you can sneak through the back, the window, or the ventilating shaft, or the basement? Do not underestimate the Chicoms. They could be rattling on Taiwan while they are doing something else out of view. Classic magician's trick. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2005-05-08 13:29 |
| #14 Anybody got a list of Chinese pilots who have landed on a carrier at night in heavy seas? |
| Posted by: Matt 2005-05-08 12:47 |
| #13 -moose: That huge Chinese army can't really get anywhere. All right, they could invade VietNam (though it didn't work out too well in '79) and the rest of Indochina, but couldn't get beyond Burma. They won't be invading Central Asia or India over some of the worst terrain in the world. Siberia? OK. Maybe, if they are willing to risk a nukular war with Russia. But off-shore in Asia or the Pacific? Having a huge army is worthless if you can't control the waterways to transport it anywhere. See: Britain vs. Napolean or Hitler. Now, if we were stupid enough to attempt to invade mainland China, well, that might be a different matter. But what foreign policy objective could we possibly meet even with a successful invasion? I just don't see how we can care what mainland China does on the continent. |
| Posted by: Jackal 2005-05-08 12:19 |
| #12 Kidding of course. |
| Posted by: RJ Schwarz 2005-05-08 12:00 |
| #11 Of course China will just dig a tunnel to Taiwan wide enough for massive troop movements. If it's good enough for the North Koreans (and the Chinese digging to North America in a B-movie) it's sound enough politics for the party. Reality be damned. Short of destroying everything it's pretty much the only chance they have. |
| Posted by: RJ Schwarz 2005-05-08 12:00 |
| #10 Don't fool yourselves! Both the US and China have been feverishly preparing for conflict for almost 25 years now. And it is not in any way still just at the planning stage. China has been vigorously spreading its tentacles East, South and West, and both sides are scrambling for any advantage. And I will note that China has several advantages that the US will be very hard-pressed to overcome. The first of these being almost unlimited manpower, think in the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS, the second being the ability to trade space for time. Third, the Chinese are also willing to sustain a conflict for decades. Now compare them honestly with shrinking technological advantage. The USs options are to first, align with India and its vast manpower resources, while trying to diplomatically isolate China; second, to keep the battle at sea as much as possible, instead of being drawn inland; and third, to have to nearly occupy Taiwan as it becomes a nuclear power--the only way it can ever assure its independance--with the recognition that it is, and will remain, a de jure as well as de facto separate nation. To do so it will have to form alliegence with Japan, who will be compelled by circumstances to remilitarize enough to balance their combined power against China beyond that conflict. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-05-08 11:10 |
| #9 China operates on a different time scale than we do. They have all the time in the world to achieve their aims and we would do well to remember that. |
| Posted by: bk 2005-05-08 10:20 |
| #8 China operated on a different time scale than we do. They have all the time in the world to achieve their aims and we would do well to remember that. |
| Posted by: bk 2005-05-08 10:20 |
| #7 M'more worried about them trying to "wait" and starve Taiwan out by encirclement and diplomatic isolation -- "the best victory is not fought" and all that. |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2005-05-08 09:45 |
| #6 Any Chinese external 'adventures', like Taiwan, will only come about in the last gasp of the existing regime, a la the "Falklands". The internal pressures and instability of the regime will undermine the existing government faster than it can organize and train itself for the Greater China push. Most 'threat' assessments generally ignor the internal issue. Remember, that unlike Western democracies, the party has to watch the military as closely as it watches its citizens. |
| Posted by: Jomolet Glaque2594 2005-05-08 09:09 |
| #5 My thoughts are: China has not been able to overcome Taiwan - which is within shelling distance - and the last time it tried to project forces even one kilometer beyond its borders, Vietnam soundly thrashed them. I would not want to try to invade China - 'shades of Napolean and Hitler invading Russia - but China's ability to project power beyond its borders is doubtful. In modern warfare, logistics is critical - and once extended beyond its borders, China may be unable to support its forces. Although the Chinese business sector has shown some ability to extend itself, the Chinese government bureaucracy has yet to demonstrate that it can project itself. I sincerely doubt that Chinese aircraft carriers, carrier-based pilots, and attack submarines are ready to compete head-to-head with US counterparts. |
| Posted by: Lone Ranger 2005-05-08 09:02 |
| #4 Here's how we will fight China: By 2010 the ENTIRE Chinese navy will be laying at the bottom of the ocean. |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-05-08 07:51 |
| #3 Mucky you're up mighty late. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-05-08 06:19 |
| #2 Apart from the intro, the article is subscriber only. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-05-08 05:43 |
| #1 im hater long artakels! >:( ima guesin we blokade msg? |
| Posted by: muck4doo 2005-05-08 02:08 |