TO TAKE TAIWAN, FIRST KILL A CARRIER

The Jamestown Foundation ^ | July 8, 2002 | Richard D. Fisher, Jr.

[Poohbah]

Didn't our "big sticks" get taken down a notch or two - LORAL guidance technology, W-88 warhead, ..., etc?

Are you saying that the Chinese would fire ballistic missiles at our carriers? Ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads?

The Chinese would discover a few things in very short order if they did that. First, they would discover that after your seaports have been obliterated, it's hard to import things like oil or food. Second, they would discover that after a few rail junctions got nuked, it's hard to move domestic agricultural products from where they're produced to where they're consumed. Third, having a very large population that you can't feed is NOT a good thing.

[Poohbah]

There's another SLIGHT problem: it has a maximum range of 7,500 yards.

[jslade]

Anyone like to guess where our BOOMERS are? Hmmmmmmmmmm! And, I assume you know what boomers are!

[Doc On The Bay]

---& REMEMBER the "Fate" of Carthage!!

We are SAVAGE if attacked!

Doc

[Jeff Head]

Get the book above. I have the ChiComms doing just that .... with big ones.

Swim out as in hundreds of kilometers with smart technology to act as intelligent mines once they get where they are going (Op Area) ... waiting to ignite the rocket when the right thing gets close enough.

All done in high security/secrecy and then ambushing us as we send a big CBT to the aid of Korea.

[DB]

Isn't the Chines Sunburn weapon that is designed to take out US carriers a nuclear device?

[varon]

If China sinks an American aircraft carrier during an invasion of Taiwan, do you think the United States would just go home?

YES!

[gcruse]

I have always thought that a war would first go nuclear at sea.
Specifcally in the Pacific. The Soviets developed the Backfire
bomber and muclear missiles to strike at carriers. The Chinese may also do so.

They would not need to go nuclear to take out a carrier, nor
use anything so crude as a bomber.

Six Sunburn supersonic antiship missile strikes with
conventional warheads are enough to sink a carrier.
China has already accepted delivery of these from Russia.
The Yakhont supersonic antiship missile is superior to
the Sunburn and on its way to the Chinese arsenal.

I don't think the US will go nuclear first.  Using conventional
warheads, the Chinese can accomplish their first objective
without giving America a nuclear excuse.

And if that isn't enough to give you pause, think
about supercavitating torpedoes, of which we
have none.

[Lake]

>>Isn't the Chines Sunburn weapon that is designed to take out US carriers a nuclear device?

Sunburns can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads. It was originallly designed to deliver a nuke to sink a carrier.

[Poohbah]

Swim out as in hundreds of kilometers with smart technology to act as intelligent mines once they get where they are going (Op Area) ... waiting to ignite the rocket when the right thing gets close enough.

Hmm. Expensive boats, capable of performing only one mission, with a weapon that will have a pathetic search rate across their OpArea, which in turn will require both perfect secrecy (which means no operational testing--the oceans have ears, dontcha know) and that the Americans be dumber than a box of rocks in order for this to actually work. And the vast resources spent on this weapons system result in the PLAN not having enough amphibious sealift to actually GET to Taiwan.

Yup. Brilliant Chicom strategy you've proposed there.

[Lake]

>>then ambushing us as we send a big CBT to the aid of Korea.

Apparently you have read the Art of War. Ambushing is one of the major tactics PLA is good at.

[reg45]

If China sinks an American aircraft carrier during an invasion of Taiwan, do you think the United States would just go home?

Only if it happened during a Democratic administration.

[section9]

In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled TO TAKE TAIWAN, FIRST KILL A CARRIER, virgil wrote: If the Chinese attacked Taiwan and sunk a US carrier, how do you think Japan would react? Or all of the Pacific rim countries? China would be isolated. And they could just kiss the Panama Canal privleges good bye. We won't stand for that. America will protect its interests. Don't expect Europe to help though. They may sink the carrier with a lot of expenditure and a few lies, but we will hurt them where it counts. We'll send them back to the stone age from whence they recently came. Wal-Mart might have a problem though. Actually I think this article is floating about because there is also a big defense bill floating about in Congress right now.

Personally, I think that a war between China and the United States will go our way for one simple reason: they have to come and get us.

The hinge on which any Chinese invasion plan for Taiwan moves is the number of troopships and assault boats that can be sent across the Taiwan Strait. John Pike posted this to FAS back when he was with that outfit:

If you look real close, you'll find that it's an overlay of Operation NEPTUNE, the invasion of Normandy, on a map of the Taiwan Strait. The big mistake that Pike made was that he believes that there would be a landing in the North, while I suspect that the Chicoms would land in the southern lowlands to build up for the slog up the mountainous spine of the island.

There's a problem. The ROC's are a fairly well trained defense force of some 220,000 men on active duty. God knows how many can be called up on short notice. 21st Army Group was able to achieve local superiority in the decisive first hours of D-Day before OBWest could commit its infantry reserves to the battle. At present, I don't see the Chinese being able to master the Taiwan Strait until they really expand their navy. Otherwise, how can they get the bodies they need ashore to master the Taiwanese defense?

Look what the Chinese have to really do. They have to get about 300,000 infantry and support personnel from Fujian province well over 100 miles of water. This may include an airborne division landing, probably as a feint, up north or against Taiwanese communications nodes. To do that, they can't do it in junks. They need normal, real, honest-to-God transports and amphibious assault craft. They need tons o' Higgins Boats to make a forced assault against defended beaches.

Now then, all this doesn't happen in a vaccuum. China has to deal with the wider strategic problem of the Pacific theater. The Chinese are falling into the trap that the Japanese did of thinking in terms of the Decisive Battle. Americans thought in terms of a Decisive series of Campaigns. Allow me to illustrate.

If you look at the map, please notice the small chain of islands south of the Marianas called the Carolines. Japanese doctrine called for a decisive battleship gun duel in the region of the Carolines after the opening of hostilities. They wanted to draw the Americans out. The Americans, on the other hand, thought in terms of a multi-year campaign that would stretch from Pearl Harbor to the China coast.

One side was thinking in terms of one battle, while ignoring larger strategic and political questions that might have kept them from going to war in the first place. The other side was thinking in terms of a series of battles that would eventually lead to Tokyo Bay.

This is exactly what the Chinese are doing now. They are building themselves up for a decisive battle in the hopes that that a smashing victory can cow the Americans into submission. And that's just the political assumption that they have made.

Here is the dunderheaded military assumption: Japan will stay neutral and the United States will come charging into a Chinese missile trap like a wild bull. It won't happen that way. On the contrary, the Chinese will find, to their horror, that the U.S. Navy and the Combined Fleet will be working as allies in this war. After all, Japan cannot afford to allow China to control the sea lanes leading to the Home Islands.

The IJN is a formidable fighting force. Other than the United States and the Royal Navies, it is probably the best in the world.

I mentioned the need for the Chicoms to get 300,000 guys across by hook or by crook. Well, most of them are going in transports. We will have a war warning. You have to gather troops at Fujian province to load them onto the boats.

Now if you're Admiral Yang or somesutch, you have to look forward to a cruise missile curtain as your troopships are going accross the Strait. That's what the Americans are going to do to the fleet. The Chinese are thinking in terms of the naval battle. The Americans, thinking in several layers, are going to use bombers as cruise missile platforms with hunter/killer guidance, probably supplemented by orbiting drones, GPS systems, and attack submarines.

Some Chicoms will get ashore. Perhaps 25-75 thousand. That's not enough to take on a Taiwanese army desperate to defend the only homeland they've ever known (and probably defending a government that has just declared independence, as well...). But the pressure on the PLAN to go out and kill carriers will become immense, and that's when they'll do something really stupid.

Remember during the Falklands War when the General Belgrano came out to fight and perhaps kill the Invincible and the Hermes? Belgrano got a couple of fish amidships for its troubles and lost a couple of hundred guys. Think of the same thing on a massive scale. Only we will let the Chinese come out to play. Go back and look at the map. Imagine an American/Japanese task force of four to five carriers, plus innumerable destroyers, frigates, subs, support vessels, and hundreds of aircraft.

The "Combined Fleet" will be lined up in an arc from Pelielu in the south to the Bonins and the Home Islands in the North. We want them to go into that big void east of the Philippines! It's the Carolines in reverse from WWII. Only the Chinese must come to us to have a chance to win the war! I mean, this whole area is made for us. The pressure on our friend Admiral Yang to start bagging carriers will come right from the CCP's Military Committee itself. He doesn't attack, he goes in disgrace. And his family's political prospects go with it. You know, the cushy job his eldest son has in Beijing?

And the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy will go out into the Pacific. Past its mainland aircover. That's when we will see the biggest slaughter since the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot of 1944. Submarines, frigates. Air strike packages that would warm the cockles of the heart of any former FR aviator. The Imperial Japanese Navy will get its first surface kills since Leyte Gulf.

Sometime, as the Chinese troopships are picked off by cruise missiles, they won't be able to make it halfway across, and they'll stop coming. Meanwhile, the airborne division and the first wave that landed will be marooned. They will "cease resistance", so to speak, so that they can return to China with "face" intact. It will all be handled in a very Chinese fashion, so to speak, so that business interests will not be harmed in the long run.

This is how I know it's going to happen. I just don't see the Chinese being able to hold back from the need to kill a carrier. If we are successful in attritting their assault craft, and if that puts the whole campaign in jeopardy, then the Chinese have to come out to Play. That's when we win the war. We will not do things by the Chinese playbook.

And it will happen because the Chinese will be thinking in terms of a decisive naval action, while we will be thinking in terms of a decisive naval campaign.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[Jhoffa_]

If China sinks an American aircraft carrier during an invasion of Taiwan, do you think the United States would just go home?

No, imo at that point they couldn't go home. It would be political suicide to do so.

I think an act like that would commit us above all else.

[Poohbah]

That is an outstanding analysis.

Interesting observations on the different foci of American and Japanese planning, and how the Chinese seem to be repeating the mistake.

Do you think that this is a product of Oriental vs. Western cultural perceptions of and approaches to warfare?

[Jeff Head]

Ahhh ... you obviously haven't read the book Mr. Watson ... or you would know that you are wrong on all counts there.

Not single purpose vesels at all ... not expensive ... relatively extraordinary search capablities ... tested well beforehand ... and its hard to be dumb about something you are absolutely not expecting and have not "scenario'ed". That's why an ambush can work on "smart" people sometimes ... because it comes from where you do not expect it.

But that's okay, anyone who has read it knows these things ... and many have commented on them. It's also okay, because whether you agree with it or not, and whether you think it's possible or not ... it is a work of fiction.

But I go too far. I have to leave something for people to discover in the book ... and believe me, there's lots more.

[Poohbah]

Not single purpose vesels at all ... not expensive ... relatively extraordinary search capablities ... tested well beforehand ... and its hard to be dumb about something you are absolutely not expecting and have not "scenario'ed".

Extraordinary search capabilities. Cheap. Well-tested.

And all without the US ever finding out.

I see that your series is more along the lines of science fiction. They have a saying at ONI: "In God We Trust. Everyone else, we watch."

Suggested reading: Blind Man's Bluff by Sherri Sontag et al.

[section9]

That is an outstanding analysis.

Interesting observations on the different foci of American and Japanese planning, and how the Chinese seem to be repeating the mistake.

Do you think that this is a product of Oriental vs. Western cultural perceptions of and approaches to warfare?

No! Sun Tzu was the greatest strategic thinker in human history. His greatness lay in his simplicity. He would be the first to think in terms of campaign, and would attempt to bring Taiwan into the Chinese fold by a combination of blandishments, incentives, and other non-military devices.

He would achieve a great victory without firing a shot.

The present group of Chinese leaders, being a gaggle of conspirators in search of legitimacy, would be in need of a great victory to show the population on CTV and in People's Daily. They don't think in terms that Sun Tzu does because there is an overriding political imperative to do otherwise, to have a "famous victory" at arms.

There would be a terrible price to be paid for their miscalculation. But that would not stop them: the Japanese made the same mistake.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[Jeff Head]

Already read it.

And whether you believe it or not, it is possible for others to take us by surprise ... just read up on your history.

But, like I said ... it is fiction ... although there is clearly an aspect of it that warns about the consequences and potential outcome that can derive from so much of the corruptness, out and out sell outs, and lowering of the guard that afflicted us so much through of the 90's. A good bit of which is still left to be remedied.

[Lake]

>>And all without the US ever finding out.

The US only found out some Chinese troops of "regimental size" when actually China had sent over 30 divisions into Korea.