On a recent trip I visited both South Korea and Taiwan. I thought both peoples were wonderful. Food, not so much. Taiwanese is excellent and Koreans either spice the living feces out of their food or don’t spice it at all. Both countries contribute tremendously to American imports in their entirety or in part. South Korea wouldn’t exist but for U.N. (primarily U.S.) intervention and Taiwan should continue to exist as a separate country. I just think that, if the U.S. shows resolve, China will never invade.
We need Taiwan. “Taiwanese companies hold a 68 percent market share in the manufacture of semiconductors,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company “produces around 90 percent of the world’s leading-edge semiconductors that are used for artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing applications.” If that’s not enough, Taiwan will be critical in ensuring America has the first commercial quantum computers. That’s vital because such computers could decrypt any current codes and essentially win World War III without having to fire a shot.
But clickbait headlines notwithstanding, I think Taiwan is pretty safe and will become more so as it upgrades its defenses.
Start with two simple premises. One is China’s historical military strategist, Sun Tzu. The other is that wonderful (or awful, depending on perspective) Taiwan Strait.
Sun Tzu, in his “The Art of War,” (written probably between 475 and 221 B.C.) had no theme more recurrent than don’t engage an enemy unless you’re pretty sure of victory. It’s actually pretty logical; the point is how often he emphasized it. And it’s not just the president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Xi Jinping who knows that but any literate Chinese. Among the ancient philosopher's exhortations are “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting,” and “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
The second premise is the PRC needs to get a lot of men and materiel across that strait. Indeed, by far it would be the largest amphibious landing in history.
POTENTIAL COMBAT ALLIES
Who will side with Taiwan? Practically everyone in the area hates the PRC. But I expect the combat players on Taiwan’s side will be the U.S. and Japan. Countries like Australia and South Korea will provide indirect support. Yes, the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act could be less ambiguous about whether the U.S. would actually fight for China, as could American officials. The US top envoy to Taiwan (it doesn’t have an official ambassador) just said “First of all, and the most important thing, the U.S. will strongly support Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities.” Um, what exactly does that mean?
Outgoing President Joe Biden has repeatedly made it clear that America would go to war and a Democratic successor would probably follow suit. Trump hasn’t said no, rather in 2022 he declared “there isn’t a f***ing thing we can do about it..” As we shall see, there most certainly is and so if that’s all that’s holding him back, it’s hardly a “No!”
That said, American officials have routinely asserted that a Chinese attack on Taiwan is intolerable. And indeed, there’s nothing the U.S. Navy loves more than the Chinese threat. When I was a paratrooper, I wanted to go to war. Not because I wanted to kill anybody; that’s sick. It’s what I had trained for. Currently, the Navy’s focus is on China’s bullying of the Philippines. But the U.S. isn’t going to war over that.
Japan “Japan worries that any conflict in Taiwan would spread to its territory, noted Reuters this year. It has also just signed a pact with the Philippines allowing its troops to train and effectively be stationed there. Further, Japan has been allowing a major buildup of American forces on its southern islands nearest China and Taiwan even as it engages in its own buildup. It’s hard to believe that if the U.S. attacked Chinese assets from Japan that China wouldn’t strike back, bringing Japan into the war.
In the event, go back to Sun Tzu. Xi can hardly be certain of no direct U.S. or Japanese involvement.
We would expect the PLA to first pound Taiwan with missiles and its considerable air force, that would be opposed by the tiny and otherwise lackluster Taiwanese one. That said, Taiwan has considerable ground-based antiaircraft defenses, including the latest model of the U.S. Patriots and a vast array of indigenous systems, including the Sky Bow. Taiwan claims the Sky Bow III costs just a sixth the price of a Patriot, has a greater range, and is nearly twice as fast.
An unknown on the allied side is just how stealthy is the PRC mainstay J-20 stealth aircraft, and serious questions have been raised. Far less is known about the newly-unveiled J-31B. Safe to say the PRC routinely lies about military capabilities, including recently a media-wowing robotic dog allegedly with a machine gun attached. (It was just a prop; none of the ubiquitous videos ever showed it being fired.)
In any event, the F-22 is considered the world’s top fighter, and the U.S. recently sent them to bases in the Philippines and Japan. From there they can be over Taiwan in minutes and put a serious hurt on PRC air capabilities, including possibly establishing air superiority or even air supremacy. Unless and until air superiority is established, the allies will probably rely primarily on stealth aircraft. The U.S. has more F-22s and F-35s stationed about eight hours out on Guam, and can have B-2s there or make the long flight from the U.S.
The Navy can probably have three or four of its 11 super carriers on station, but those would need to be even farther away than Guam unless those Chinese ballistic “carrier killer” missiles can be defeated either with weaponry or by confusing their guidance. The Navy probably knows whether this is feasible, but China does not. Again, that element of uncertainty.
PRC helicopter assault and airborne troops, would probably land behind lines to generally sow confusion and take out specialized targets. But Taiwan knows what those targets are and would be ready. Light infantry can only hold out so long and would need continual reinforcement or evacuation if forces from the strait don’t meet up with them.
STRAIT JACKET
Now that strait.
It’s about 100 miles wide at its narrowest point, coincidentally about the distance of the D-Day invasion. Which is where the similarities end. The Normandy beaches and beyond were prime invasion territory; not so the coastline of Taiwan. First, most of the Taiwanese beaches are very shallow. The PRC would have to anchor ships far from the coast and move equipment to the shores slowly, making the ships vulnerable to attack. Conversely, Germany’s Atlantic Wall was apparently around 2,000 miles, stretching from the bottom of France all the way around Norway.
Germany had to guard coastline from the French border with Spain all the way to entire Norwegian border. I saw massive pillboxes on a Dutch beach. The western coast of Taiwan is only about 100 miles, but because there’s so little actual beach areas needing defending would be a fraction of that.
These are the so-called “red beaches,” with about 12 facing the PRC or on Taiwan’s northern tip. About six are on the far side of the island, requiring landing craft to swing around with every extra mile fraught with peril. Beijing would also have to assume Taiwan could destroy its major ports at a conflict’s outset. The paucity of landing zones means these ships would be coming in what we nicely referred to as “kill boxes,” albeit moving ones. Or, if you will, channels within the channel.
And here’s the kicker. The PRC doesn’t have nearly the landing craft needed. Taipei has about 180,000 active duty military that it’s looking to expand. There are huge numbers floating around about available reservists, but it appears those who can actually fight is about 300,000.
It’s traditionally considered attackers need to outnumber defenders by three to one. I’m guessing the PRC would need at least that because there would be lots of urban warfare, which with I have personal experience. It’s all-dimensional with the enemy potentially on all sides and on your level, above your level in buildings, and below in the form of mines. China would need something on the order of 1.4 million troops, compared to about 160,000 allied troops that landed on Normandy on D-Day. It has an amazing number of border disputes with other countries, 13, and must secure some with troops. Still, using its own reserves it can scrape that number up. But it has to get them across.
The PLA amphibious fleet could potentially transport around 24,000 troops and 900 amphibious armored vehicles, while its amphibious composite brigade could transport at least 16,000 troops or 400 amphibious armored vehicles, according to a Taiwanese Institute for National Defense and Security Research report this year. PLA airborne units and air assault brigades have a transport capacity of approximately 12,000 personnel at once. That leaves the PRC a bit shy of 1.4 million.
To use another WWII model, despite popular lore and Churchill’s wonderful “so much owed by so many to so few” speech, even if Germany had won air superiority it had little hope of a successful invasion. As with the PRC now, the Nazis didn’t have the landing craft; it was overwhelming reliant on river barges that would have easily been swamped or intercepted by the formidable Royal Navy.
So, as with German plans, the overwhelming number of transports would therefore need to be requisitioned civilian craft. They would be unarmed, unarmored, and not built for a seaborne invasion. Hence, roll-on and roll-off speeds would be very slow. Roll-off would almost certainly be under fire. The requisitioning process would be planned ahead but take time to implement, not that anyone is delusional enough to think China could launch an attack on short notice. The U.S. will have time to get its forces in place.
MINES: ASYMETRICAL WARFARE AT ITS FINEST
These PLA ships would encounter minefields, with a vast array of types. Mines play a vital role in asymmetrical warfare because they’re cheap, powerful, and easy to deploy. The success of the Korean War Inchon landings is well known; fewer know the subsequent amphibious operation at Wonsan Harbor was a disaster due to enemy mines, delaying landings by five days and sinking four minesweepers without enemy fire.
Mines can be sown with UAVs, piloted planes, surface ships (both military and commercial), submarines, and even launched from shore. The main purpose of any minefield is to channel or slow the enemy while they try to clear them. “China has about 60 mine countermeasures ships, but not all vessels are able to clear all types of mines,” according to War on the Rocks. “Estimating based on historical averages and assuming a third are not operationally ready due to maintenance, each of China’s 40 available minesweepers might clear 0.8 to 2 mines per day, for a total of 32 to 80 mines.” Note that with the helicopter version of the U.S. Volcano mine-laying system, 960 mines can be laid per sortie.
Clearing a passageway typically requires removing 10 percent of a minefield. “Doing so through even a small minefield of 600 mines could delay Chinese forces at least 0.75 to 1.8 days, and possibly longer if mines are laid close together,” per War on the Rocks. Meanwhile, expect vessels to be harassed by artillery, aircraft, missiles, surface ships, and subs. Any number of U.S. missile-launching platforms can theoretically sink the whole mine-clearing fleet, including a single B1b Lancer with a capacity of 84 bombs.
Taiwan expects 11 M142 HIMARS (high-mobility artillery rocket systems) along with 84 MGM-140 ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) ballistic missiles to be delivered this year or next, along with another 18 HIMARS in 2026. The weapons they fire, depending on the configuration, can reach across the channel and each shell would destroy a ship or alternatively wreak havoc on a launching port. If the PLA Air Force misses even one of these, there could be hell to pay. Taiwan also has indigenous supersonic missiles that can reach farther than Beijing.
As the Chinese craft approach, they will be taken under fire by 155mm howitzers. Yes, howitzers can target ships, especially slow-moving mine sweepers and transports. Taiwan appears to have about 600 155-millimeter tubes.
The array of artillery and missiles the U.S. can fire at Chinese ships or sites supporting those ships from the Philippines and Japan is staggering. But a single B1 bomber can fire 14 stand-off missiles, even as the time-tested Tomahawk Cruise Missile with a 1,500-mile range can be fired from land or sea.
Surface-launched anti-ship platforms include Ticonderoga class cruisers with 122 missile launching tubes and 14 triple torpedo launchers, plus Arleigh Burke class destroyers with as many as 98 missiles with six torpedo launchers. Plus there are smaller missile-carrying ships. The U.S. has three types of attack and cruise missile submarines that can fire between 40 to 154 missiles and torpedoes, while Taiwan currently has only four aging submarines but is building eight new ones armed with both missiles and powerful MK-48 torpedoes.
Of course, all of these would new to carry a variety of weapons to defend themselves and possibly attack land targets. But it should be sobering to Xi that a single surface ship, submarine, or even bomber, can carry enough munitions to essentially eliminate a cross-channel attack.
There are numerous levels of uncertainty on both sides, but it doesn’t even out.
It’s China’s decision to go to war. The pressure is on them. True, in the past they’ve shown an awful propensity for sending men into meat grinders. But that was under Mao, something of a god to them, and it was when the populace had no concept of upper mobility or really a good life. This is not a generation that grew up with nothing but war – against Japan, civil, and in Korea. Xi is no god-like Mao and the great aspiration of Chinese today is joining the middle class. Most probably know Taiwan not only has never been part of the PRC, it’s remained fully outside Chinese control for the last 129 years.
Ultimately, if China were more interested in conquering Taiwan it would act that way. The money it’s plowed into three aircraft carriers with a fourth under construction could have built a lot of landing craft and mine-clearing vessels. Why the constant head-butting with the Philippines over fishing waters and possible mineral resources? Just as Hitler spoke enthusiastically about invading Britain but was never particularly enthusiastic about Operation Sea Lion, expect the same of Xi. Sun Tzu is watching.
