Posted on 12/10/2020 12:45:24 PM PST by RomanSoldier19
Months after eliminating a popular challenge to its rule in Hong Kong, China is turning to an even higher-stakes target: self-governing Taiwan. The island has been bracing for conflict with China for decades, and in some respects, that battle has now begun.
It’s not the final, titanic clash that Taiwan has long feared, with Chinese troops storming the beaches. Instead, the People’s Liberation Army, China’s two-million-strong military, has launched a form of “gray zone” warfare. In this irregular type of conflict, which stops short of an actual shooting war, the aim is to subdue the foe through exhaustion.
Beijing is conducting waves of threatening forays from the air while ratcheting up existing pressure tactics to erode Taiwan’s will to resist, say current and former senior Taiwanese and U.S. military officers. The flights, they say, complement amphibious landing exercises, naval patrols, cyber attacks and diplomatic isolation.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Once China Joe is in office, the CCP know they can walk right in to Taiwan and the U.S. will do nothing.
Seems familiar somehow...
If Taiwan acquired a few nukes that would settle Beijing down nicely. Sure they’d scream and cry and threaten. But commies only attack when they have overwhelming power. Even then the Chinese don’t perform well, if their invasion of Vietnam is any indicator.
I just refuse to give that much credit to China’s military. It’s huge but how would it perform? It is huge but hugely corrupt and according to some reports the soldiers are a lot of mama’s boys. Right now Chinese troops are being medivacked off the Himalayas facing India because they can’t hack it.
I remember what a threat the Soviet Army was considered. Yet their equipment and troop quality was terrible and in actuality wouldn’t have done all that well against NATO.
Communists engage in propaganda lies at all times. I suspect the state of their military is far worse than many think. .02
Yep. Its why the USA should not get involved directly with a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. IMHO most Taiwanese are not prepared or willing to defend their island. At least 10% of Taiwanese live on Mainland China doing business. All rich people there have a foreign passport. Young men avoiding their military service is a national sport.
They’ve built themselves a very nice society and economy, but when it comes to conflict with China, they suffer from national cognitive-dissonance.
“Right now Chinese troops are being medivacked off the Himalayas facing India because they can’t hack it.”
Must be why Castro-Trudeau is offering arctic warfare training in Canada for the PLA and got ticked off when the Canadian generals didn’t immediately fall into line.
.
“Yep. Its why the USA should not get involved directly with a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.”
Correct me if I am wrong. We are obligated by a Treaty to defend Taiwan.
That may be a shock to biden.
> IMHO most Taiwanese are not prepared or willing to defend their island. At least 10% of Taiwanese live on Mainland China doing business...
alas, true
((idiots))
That's why the Chinese want to do military maneuvers with the Canadians ,
to learn tactics of the NATO forces, and learn what they can adjust to cold climate conditions.
Personally, I think that it is all about tactics.
What worries me is that in the USA we have General Staff that is made up largely of careerists who are far better at political infighting and bureaucratic oneupmanship than actually fighting major engagements. A bureaucracy that punishes competence as all bureaucracies do. And Ship Captains who have crews at each others throats because of the women aboard ships. The Navy of today is NOT the Navy of WWII or even Vietnam.
Screwing around in the sand with a bunch of 9th Century throwbacks to doesn’t prepare us to face China’s largely modern forces. Though the actual state of China’s equipment remains to be seen.
There are a lot of submarines in those waters. They could all attack the Chinese ships and no one would know if they belonged to Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, India or the USA.
Taiwan only has 2 old diesel subs and has been unable to get any country to sell them new subs. Probably because of ChiComm interference. Trump approve tech sales to Taiwan to build their own subs, but construction on the first one just started last month and no subs are expected til 2025.
Biden might scotch that deal, since he is a Chicomm tool.
What do you think about giving Taiwan a couple of nukes ?
Too provocative ?
“What difference does it make!”
The USS Fitzgerald collision. The OOD was Sarah Coppock, Tactical Action Officer was Natalie Combs, and they weren't speaking to each other (for reasons unknown). The DC officer was also a woman who never left the bridge.
Sadly, I think you are right.
And I think Israel will be forced to attack Iran's nuclear facilities once Biden resumes helping them (Iran) with its nuclear ambitions.
Key excerpts:
...
In addition, Taiwanese service members and Western observers say, Taiwan is suffering a serious and worsening decay in the readiness and training of its troops, particularly its army units.
One army conscript told Reuters he had only fired between 30 and 40 rounds with his rifle during training and was never taught how to clear a jammed firearm. “I don’t think I’m capable of fighting in a war,” said Chen, the soldier, speaking on condition his full name not be disclosed. “I don’t think I’m a qualified soldier.”
...
“The military has been whittled down,” said Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel who spent most of last year on the island evaluating its defense capability in a Taiwan government-funded research project. “It is almost as if fighting to defend the country is somebody else’s responsibility,” said Newsham, now a researcher at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies.
...
In his four months of training last year, a 24-year-old navy conscript surnamed Lin spent a total of 40 minutes on two warships docked at the southern port of Kaohsiung. In an interview, he said he fired about 16 rounds from a rifle on one occasion, after the magazine was loaded for him. Only half of his intake cohort of 400 conscripts could swim a required 50 meters.
“The four month training was just a waste of time,” said Lin, who spoke on condition his full name not be used. In Taiwan, military members who disclose operational details could be deemed to have violated the law. “I would much prefer to go to work. If they want to train us, they need to do it properly.”
Another 24-year old, the army conscript surnamed Chen, described his firearms training to Reuters. In modern armies, trainees might typically fire hundreds of rounds. Not Chen: In four months, he said he twice fired between six and 10 rounds from a rifle, at a distance of 25 meters from the target. And he twice fired about the same number of rounds from 175 meters. He said he was taught how to reload a magazine, but not how to clear the rifle if it jammed. Chen said he also was trained on an anti-tank missile and a grenade launcher - but only about 10% of his intake of 150 conscripts were selected to fire each weapon.
“They only taught me how to fire a rifle,” Chen said, “and the rest of the training was irrelevant to real fighting.”
...
The troubled switch to a full-time force has contributed to a gutting of the reserves, a crucial component of the island’s ability to reinforce full-time units and repulse invading troops. The 2.31 million-strong reserve force only exists on paper, according to Taiwanese and foreign military experts.
“The reserves really are a mess,” said Newsham. “Pretty close to useless.”
In interviews, reservists called up for refresher training of between one and seven days complained of wasting time on pointless drills, lectures and films. There were no realistic exercises or clear explanations of what action would be required in a crisis, they said.
A reservist surnamed Lee said he was called up for five days of training last year, the second time since he finished his conscription service in 2015. He described the experience as “an opportunity to make friends.” On occasion, instructors knew the students were bored, abandoned their lectures and opened the floor to trainees to introduce themselves. One of Lee’s fellow reservists, a car dealer, took the opportunity to make a sales pitch.
“I’m certainly not trained properly to fight in a war,” Lee said. “The retraining only lasted five days, in which we only fired rifles once.”]
[Once China Joe is in office, the CCP know they can walk right in to Taiwan and the U.S. will do nothing.]
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/defection-denied-2/
Why? So a routine junket-style meeting with the Chinese wouldn’t be canceled. Note that Blinken, the guy Biden wants at State, was the Biden henchman responsible for making the case for kicking the Chinese defector out of the US consulate.
Given the stakes over Taiwan are significant in terms of defense costs and military personnel shipped back in body bags, I’d expect Biden to stay aloof in the event of a Chinese invasion. Xi Jinping will presumably have made the same calculation. It’s coming, and the Taiwanese had better get ready, psychologically-speaking.
From the article:
PLA troops have been garrisoned in Hong Kong since the city returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Yet the city’s protest movement was quashed this spring not by military force, but by a combination of aggressive policing, the imposition of a draconian national security law and the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, which enabled the government to ban all mass gatherings.
Seems familiar somehow...
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Blue states and Biden have to take their marching orders from somewhere...
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