In repeated war games, we cannot defend Taiwan. All of Taiwan and surrounding areas are well within range of 100s if not thousands of ChiCom land-based hypersonic ship killing missiles.
OTOH, it will not be a cakewalk to invade Taiwan, since it is 20 times larger than Okinawa, with a much greater population, and 10K’ mountains.
My prediction: China will not overtly invade Taiwan, but will gradually put the screws to it with a sea blockade, daring the USN to defy it, putting our warships in ChiCom missile range.
Remember, in war games, the USN gets sunk by those missiles. Our CVNs can’t even get close enough to Taiwan to launch aircraft before they’d be hit with salvos of missiles.
In repeated war games ...
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In those games, we routinely lose the wargames to opponents because they know our moves before we make them. So we devise a new strategy to overcome the failed one. Mix it up, change the rules - which is not something the PLA can do, since they are limited by the playbook written by the CCP. A war game is a game. Its not a certainty, since no plan survives contact with an enemy - that includes the Chinese plan.
If they win on a particular strategy, the CCP plan was right, and they are heroes; if they lose, then its not their fault. If they change the strategy and win, then the PLA leaderships is a threat to the CCP and is forfeit; if they change the strategy and lose, then it is their fault and the PLA leadership is forfeit.
Almost all wars come down to logistics, something we are good and and something the PLA is horrible at.
Many here say that Chinese-made weapons are largely junk - I don’t know, but they seem certain from their experience. All those missiles, if they even work as planned, are a threat, but not something to throw one’s hands up in surrender over, like Frogs before Panzers.
Should that be the case,
1) Blow the Three Gorges dam, using conventional weapons. All it would take would be to hit one of the flood gates.
2) Paraphrase JFK, and go nucular on them. If they try to retaliate, totally thermonucularly destroy them. Pretty much the entire world has had enough of their hsit anyway. Kinda like the small town in northwest Missouri that had a psychotic town bully. Someone dealt with him, and it turned out that nobody saw nothing...
Of course, that would take competent civilian and military leadership. At this point one suspects that even our senior military officers have been bought out.
So, what in the hell do we do? That's a question.
Underwater?