Chance China invades Taiwan

[Stranger_On_A_Train]

@Velocity

IMHO, America would be well-suited to employ only stealth bombers and submarines against China in a Taiwan scenario. Those two things have the advantage of being 1) hard to detect and also 2) putting relatively few American lives at risk, while still packing firepower. Aircraft carrier battle groups, while bringing additional firepower and air cover, would not be worth the potential loss of many thousands of lives.

No; at last count we have only 19 or 20 operational B-2 ‘Spirit’ stealth bombers, and only probably 70% of those ready to fly at any given time. They are not well suited for tactical use, nor does it make sense to fly missions of thousands of miles from Anderson (Guam, the nearest base that could conceivably support the B-2) to attempt to strike mobile assets. The F-22, while technically ‘stealth’ is still potentially observable from Chinese ground-based long wave radar (as is the F-117) and lacks the payload capacity in internal stores to take out multiple vessels, and the US Air Force has so few of the extremely expensive F-22 in operation it is unlikely that they would risk such a sortie for the purpose of knocking down a few gunboats or missile ‘frigates’ when China as so many more watercraft to replace them.

US Navy submarines operating in the Taiwan Strait is untenable for reasons discussed in this thread:

@Stranger_On_A_Train

China has a large navy in quantity but it is not a ‘blue water’ navy that could operate either in the open Pacific or even sustain itself in the Indian Ocean. However, it isn’t intended to operate that far; it has enough reach and firepower to cover the East and South China Sea and provide enough targets to dilute a technically more capable naval force while throwing mass quantities of missiles and drones at opponents. Whether that strategy would ultimately be successful or not (I have my doubts) they could likely make it costly enough for the US to not want to enter into direct conflict, and the loss of an aircraft carrier or even one or two Virginia or even older Los Angeles or Seawolf attack submarines would be a substantial blow to prestige and billions of dollars of lost investment.

Agreed that it is difficult to detect a submarine out in broad ocean area; however, within the shallower depth of the East China Sea and confined space in the Taiwan Strait, US submarines may find much of the advantage from features designed for North Atlantic and Pacific blue water operations somewhat blunted, and even operations in the deeper South China sea may be more difficult as China deploys their surveillance network. With the home court advantage of having land based air cover and missile basing they can keep surface ships at bay, forcing the submarine fleet into what is essentially guided missile frigate duty with fraction of the VLS capacity at two or three times the cost of an Arleigh Burke destroyer.

Putting US naval assets in shooting range of the Chinese mainland would be a disaster in the making for an already strained United States Pacific Fleet.

@Velocity

But in response to the talk about amphibious invasion, there is also the alternate method China might use, of air assault. With Taiwan being only 90 miles away, it is well within range of helicopters. If China used its 1,500 or so helicopters, it could conceivably put, say, a hundred thousand invasion troops on Taiwan in 24 hours’ time, with the choppers flying back and forth on repeated ferry trips. But those helos would be vulnerable to Stingers and other SAMs, and those infantry would likely have no heavy weapons they could bring for firepower.

I don’t know where you are getting this absurd notion but the Peoples Liberation Army doesn’t have anything like “1,500 or so helicopters” capable of transporting a significant number of passengers, and even if they did they wouldn’t be able to bring the T/O/E to equip and support them via helicopters. A PRC invasion of Taiwan would almost certain start with naval bombardment of coastal defenses and airdrop of paratroops and equipment followed by amphibious landings at beaches in both the east and west coasts, attempting to seize civil infrastructure and industrial manufacturing before it could be sabotaged by the Taiwanese Army which will burn it to the ground rather than hand anything over to the PRC.

An attempted PRC invasion of Taiwan would be a disaster for Xi and the PRC government, and potentially catastrophic for the Republic of China…and there is likely little that the US could or would do to prevent it even before a presidential regime that will almost certainly ignore it (as Trump assuredly will because it will not impact him personally). So, logically it should not happen. However, since at least February 2022, Logic and RatIonality have taken an extended holiday together at an unspecified resort reportedly somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and I am no longer prognosticating over what Xi will or will not do with regard to his persistent threats to invade Taiwan in the attempt to bring it back into the fold of the Chinese mainland sphere of influence.

Stranger