Posted on 01/02/2022 7:53:28 PM PST by RomanSoldier19
China's military expansion, especially of its naval fleet, has received worldwide attention. As impressive as those ships are, China's leaders may not rely on them to recapture Taiwan. Lyle Goldstein is director of Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities and a former research professor at the US Naval War College.
In December, two Chinese carrier battle groups went to sea simultaneously for the first time. They did so only weeks after the Chinese Navy's newest large helicopter carrier began its sea trials.
These are major milestones for the PLA Navy, which is clearly advancing quickly in all respects. Yet they may be a red herring when it comes to the "the most dangerous place on the planet," as the Economist accurately described the Taiwan situation last year.
Indeed, China does not require large and advanced warships to attack the island. This is quite easily grasped if one simply looks at a map and sees that the medium-sized island is less than 100 miles off of China's coast.
If the US were to try to invade Cuba, would it need the 3rd, 5th, and 7th fleets? Hardly. The US Army and Air Force most likely would be quite sufficient without support from the US Navy. The same is true for Taiwan, which is unfortunate enough to be a very close neighbor of a nationalistic, rising superpower.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Special Forces?
From my home page...
7) The trick to defeating these strategies with minimal casualties will be special forces operating in Taiwan. They will need to have the ability to direct standoff weapons fire onto individual tanks and squad units in order to be effective.
8) The most likely outcome will be that Taiwan will be a giant pile of rubble. Casualties could run as high as WWII. If China wins, it could be a Pyrrhic victory. If the US wins, it will take a whole generation to repair and rebuild. I think the Chinese view towards weakness or perceived weakness is a little bit like how Germany viewed the U.S. after we sent 10,000 men wandering in the hills to find Pancho Villa, to no avail. The Germans perceived it as weakness and went ahead with their war plans.
9 posted on Sunday, September 23, 2007 9:47:37 PM by Kevmo (We should withdraw from Iraq — via Tehran. And Duncan Hunter is just the man to get that job done.)
update in 2021
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3979585/posts
There are some updated conversations regarding the sampan civilian navy internal migration approach.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3979585/posts
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4002096/posts?page=58#58
The chinese will send a sampan navy with 10million “internal migration” civilians armed with CNN uplinks, cameras, and bullhorns. When they get mowed down by our side, the resulting negative PR will be amplified by the chinese knocking out 2 of our aircraft carriers in the blockade with their hypersonic ICBM thermally guided antiship missiles.
America will luze stomach for the fight over what it already calls an internal province of China. Taiwan has never declared independence.
About a third of civilians in Taiwan are ethnic Chinese and maybe only half of them have loyalties and fifth column tendencies towards communist China. They have hundreds of thousands of cargo ships they can fill with civilians armed with cameras, CNN uplinks, and bullhorns.
The resultant slaughter will be live on CNN and the PR backlash will be enough to let China walk right back into their own internal (never did declare independence) province. If we blockade them, they’ll lob thermal-capable antiship ICBM missiles at our aircraft carriers and CNN will record them sinking to the bottom of the sea with the resultant nuclear plume.
America will luze stomach for the fight after luzing a couple $Trillion in carriers and tens of thousands of men in one afternoon, all seen on CNN, with our recourse being... to slaughter civilians. China has all the cards, they just have to lay them down on the table at this point.
And when it’s all over but the shouting, the RINOs and GOPes and democraps will be handwringing, hoping for a quick way to order chinese chips & electronics from Amazon. The chinese want the continued business of globalists so it’ll all be “can’t we just get along” and “water under the bridge” as soon as China is in charge and chips are shipping.
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Taiwan can’t easily be written off. We get much of our Semiconductor Chips from there. The country has done a magnificent job of making themselves an indispensable part of the modern world.
Why do they need to declare independence ?
Taiwan is China.
This of course assumes everyone buys the communist chinese premise that their 10 million “civillian” invasion force is sweet loving innocent victims.
Why on earth will the world swallow this crap despite liberal socialist media portraying it that way? The majority of Americans believe Biden stole the election despite full court press coverage srating otherwise formover a year.
General Tso weeps at the thought of Taiwan being turned into rubble.
I may not be Marshal, Patton, or Eisenhower, but I’m thinking all they have to do is dock a few cargo ships at a port in Taiwan and start rolling tanks off them. Absolutely ZERO Taiwan would be able to do against that.
On an open road or in an open field? Absolutley
On their own docks with civilians everywhere, rolling right into a major city within minutes? Not so sure about that. And off load infantry with them. Not much Taiwan can do about that.
This of course assumes everyone
***Not everyone, just the usual MSM and libtard suspects who always buy the standard party line.
buys the communist chinese premise that their 10 million “civillian” invasion force is sweet loving innocent victims.
***You know they won’t be innocent. I know they won’t be innocent. But the vast majority of Americans watching civilians blown away on an internal migration on CNN will NOT know such a thing, any better than they ‘knew’ the vietcong were controlled by the communist NVA.
Why on earth will the world swallow this crap
***Because it continues to swallow all kinds of similar crap.
despite liberal socialist media portraying it that way? The majority of Americans believe Biden stole the election
***That’s news to me. You might wanna back it up with some links and some facts. The majority of conservative Trumplicans believe that, but the majority of Americans are quite mediotic and stupid & they buy the pablum that the free MSM feeds it.
despite full court press coverage srating otherwise formover a year.
***You make MY point for me.
Taiwan needs to declare independence because the days of us fighting & dying for corrupt minority-run dictatorships are over.
Taiwan can’t easily be written off. We get much of our Semiconductor Chips from there.
***And the same will be true once China takes over Taiwan. They’ll just be made by slave laborers like the rest of China.
The country has done a magnificent job of making themselves an indispensable part of the modern world.
***Then they should simply declare independence. From my home page
3) Taiwan has never declared independence. It’s not like the brave Estonians standing up to Russia when communism fell. They’re like an impudent child claiming to have sovereignty over China. Their fatal miscalculation is that they know they’ll need Americans to fight for them if they are in a war, but Americans will be reluctant to shed blood for an ally that didn’t have the courage to declare independence until they were invaded on an ‘internal dispute. The chinese will hammer away at this in the press.
4) Chinese weapons policy has been to cycle through older generations of weaponry and stay about one generation behind the latest stuff. They sold their old silkworm missiles to the Iranians and used that money to upgrade their newer missiles, which are inferior to US missiles but they only need to be functional. The plan is to overwhelm defenses with superior numbers. No ship can stand up to 50 supersonic silkworm missiles aimed at it. They have similar tactics for other systems, such as anti aircraft missiles.
5) The chinese went up against Americans in Korea. They sent in 300 thousand infantry up against a much smaller American force. The key was that they only had rifles for about 1 in 5 personnel. So they would tell one to go as far as he could till he got shot, then the 2nd one would pick up the rifle & keep charging, and so on. Today, every one of those infantrymen has an automatic rifle. They are not as well equipped as their US counterparts but they can afford a lot of casualties. Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia and other engagements proved that you can’t replace feet on the ground with air superiority. No matter how advanced the air force is nor how many smart bombs get dropped, the US won’t be able to dislodge a standing army without sending in massive troup numbers and experiencing casualties. If our press made a big deal about losing 1000 US soldiers in Iraq, they’ll have a heydey with 500 thousand casualties. Seeing the press reaction emboldens the Chinese.
6) China is building a blue-water navy including submarines. They might be able to achieve a standoff in the surrounding ocean, limiting the ability to resupply american troups while the chinese troups will pillage Taiwan. Once America loses 2 nuclear powered aircraft carriers (with the resulting radioactive plumes), the calculation is that the U.S. will lose stomach for more fighting.
You don't make Semiconductors with slave labor . It depends on very talented people and the brain drain that results will take Tawain out of the game.
If traitors like Nixon and Carter and Clinton hadn't opened, expanded and blown open our trade with China, they would not be 1/10th the superpower they are now. WE funded this threat to Taiwan, WE funded this threat to ourselves.
Yeah, that is foreseeable enough. It is also foreseeable enough that the average resident in Taiwan would rather sip lattes and work at his semiconductor job than fight to the death for independence. But they’re more than willing to have Americans fight for Taiwan/Kuomintang hegemony in the region.
I imagine most cargo ships are unloaded by cranes. Not sure how many would be capable of driving tanks out of, onto the docks.
Stop counting warships. China’s special-operations forces are Taiwan’s real problem.
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Stop counting special-operations forces. China’s military familys’ sons are an invasion’s real problem. They will not accept the deaths of their sons. They will begin the process of destroying the CCP.
There is no social safety net in China - sons are the sole support for their families on both sides and all generations. Without that financial support the families face homelessness and starvation.
The CCP values its existence above all else and will not invade using any troops, well trained or not - the PLA has no combat experience, but its troops do look good on parade and in choreographed drills.
Huge casualties will spell the downfall of the Central Committee and the CCP, and they know it - thus, the huge internal and external propaganda campaign and bluster to strike fear in Western minds which no nothing of Chinese culture. imagining it to be like theirs and making that comparison.
They can use a, RO RO ship, Roll On Roll Off
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vt4L2Jb7Cws
Many ROROs have the ability to adjust sections of their decks and ramps to accommodate “high and heavy” cargo. This can run the gamut from tractors to buses to heavy construction equipment, or anything that can be wheeled through the stern door.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way
Yes, but you read Free Republic that is degenerated into covid all the time.
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