There won’t be much of one for much longer. Not only has the pro-China party (KMT) lost the last two Taiwanese presidential elections by blowout margins, but less than 5 percent of young Taiwanese students (who are still too young yet to vote, but will hit voting age in a few years) who were polled in a survey last year said they’d vote for the KMT in the future.
You mean apart from the overground test ban since 1992?
A lot of the infrastructure for nuclear weapons uses pretty obsolete tech that is proving difficult to even maintain at this point, let alone test adequately.
This is not to say that I think we should be testing nuclear weapons, or that we should upgrade all the systems to Windows 10. Just explaining what I meant by not recently tested.
I don’t want to get into a lot of details, but the technology detonating a nuclear bomb as we all know is a couple of decades short of 100 years, so there isn’t much to be gained from having a nuclear test. Which is partially why the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to the ban.
The supporting technology is a tad younger but still old. So while some of the components are old, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t tested, upgraded and checked. You don’t need to detonate a warhead to test the components.
That’s about as far as I’m willing to go.
FWIW nuclear modernization isn’t a secret or unknown issue, they started talking about it seriously with reviews of the existing arsenal during the Obama administration and final analysis was completed during Trump’s Presidency. They also have already committed hundreds of billions of dollars to the process and some of the modernization work has already been done and has been in progress for 5+ years.
Even if true, this would be tangential to the proposition that they have not been tested much recently.
I wouldn’t say it’s about the detonation. When implementing software, for example, individual modules are of course tested, but end-to-end system testing will still often find problems.
And that would be my concern with nuclear detection, launch, coordination and targeting systems (of course the real “concern” is nuclear weapons being used at all).
It may be less of a problem if there is a modernization program in progress.
I agree we should leave it there as it’s a tangent.
You don’t need a core of uranium or plutonium to test everything that goes into a functioning nuclear weapon short of the uncontrolled fission reaction. That very last step is sufficiently well understood as to make such above ground testing virtually unnecessary for maintaining a nuclear arsenal.
For the purposes of this discussion it is pretty clear that the major nuclear powers are quite confident that the physics of weapons is sufficiently well understood that if they can test that everything else is working as expected, that the final step of swapping to fissile material in a weapon is not needed to be sure testing is representative of a real weapon.
You can be sure they are testing everything else.
M_H, I agree with much of your analysis, and thanks. But I also think there are those in the uppermost reaches of Chinese leadership who want Taiwan fully under their control sooner rather than later. They will quite possibly invade if they have a halfway-decent chance of success, whenever the moment (be it militarily, politically, or as a Malvinas- or Kuwait-style distraction for the masses if the economy tanks) seems right.
If China does attack, it would be likelier to be a blockade than an invasion. A blockade plays to all of an island’s weaknesses - inability to project force to thwart blockaders hundreds of miles away from its shores, Taiwan being dependent on foreign oil imports, food imports, etc. On top of that, Taiwan’s only got 2 usable navy submarines, as opposed to China’s 70+.
An invasion, on the other hand, plays to all of an island’s strengths. Chinese warships would have to come to Taiwan, thus getting within range of antiship weaponry, as opposed to lurking hundreds of miles away out of reach. In addition, Taiwan can reinforce more quickly than China can, due to being a small densely-connected nation (you can get from any point on the island to any other point within 24 hours.) China might be able to transport, say, 100,000 troops per day by sea so that they reach Beachhead X, but Taiwan could potentially have several times that number of partisans/regulars/reservists getting to Beachhead X day after day. The Chinese invasion forces would likely be outnumbered quickly if they didn’t manage an immediate breakout from their beachhead on the first day. Additionally, with rocket artillery, it is easy for a small nation like Taiwan to hit beaches with bombardment fire; every beach could be monitored and quickly hit, given the range of modern rocket arty.
Islands are historically difficult to invade; the British Isles, for instance, haven’t been successfully conquered since 1066 AD (Hastings,) and small islands like Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and Okinawa were tough for U.S. forces in World War II - and that was an era without the modern antishipping weaponry of today.
Regarding the difficulty of invading islands, I remember reading that the commander of the British Naval task force invading the Falklands said that he would have withdrawn if the Argentine air force had had the proper fuses on their anti-ship bombs. It was that close. Invading islands is hard. While mainland China has many advantages, the one thing they lack is experience. Without that, anything they try the first time is bound to run into significant difficulties.
The Falklands illustrated two things: The immense effectiveness of submarines (British; especially nuclear-powered SSNs,) and also the immense effectiveness of antiship missiles (Argentine; Exocets).
As for China lacking modern military experience, it must be pointed out that Taiwan’s gone even longer without it (hasn’t fought anything since the 1950s.)
The Taiwanese would however be fighting with a lot more vigour with a great deal more to lose. Tends to focus the minds.
The Chinese have generally been considered the masters of playing the long game. A long term entrenched political elite means that nobody’s career or political survival has depended upon a quick result. So they wait things out. The ascendency of absolute rulers for life is both a pro and a con for this sort of stability. When they are in their prime things go well and long games work. But the danger is always that as they age they become unstable, or that internal politics over the succession corrodes the situation, and short term plays come to the fore. I’m not unconvinced that some of the unusual behaviour we see from China in the last year or so isn’t stemming from something along these lines. (I know a few Chinese and Hong Kong nationals, and the rumour mill about the underpinning politics in China runs hot. They claim there is a lot of internal tension within. China doesn’t really have a single government. It is so big that it naturally fractures, and there are always internal politics at play. ) Anyway, the danger is that someone in China decides they need a Falklands war of their own, and an ill advised invasion occurs. Absent that, it seems very doubtful China would want to enter into a direct invasion.
I am reminded of an old Yes Minister episode, and salami tactics. What if Taipei was directly hit by a category 5 typhoon? Hundreds of thousands without food water or shelter. PRC starts to deliver humanitarian aid. Delivered by the PLA. Does the US blockade Taiwan and refuse to allow the aid to be delivered? Hardly. PLA bring in workers to help with the cleanup and reconstruction. OK? And then the PLA refuse to leave. Now what? Does the US send troops to help evict the PLA? Hand to hand fighting in a city devastated by a typhoon? The invasion is effected.
With my technology biased eye I see the big problem for the USA (and the world) with Taiwan in one company: TSMC. With a massive share of worldwide leading edge semiconductor manufacturing occurring in TMSC’s Taiwan plants, there is extreme nervousness about China taking over Taiwan. Taiwan has lots of other valuable and high end capabilities, but TMSC is a very special case. The world is reconsidering the manner in which it has allowed itself to become so dependent, but it isn’t a trivial thing to turn around. And it is in Taiwan’s clear interests to ensure TMSC remains the pre-eminent supplier, as it ensures lots of self interested friends.
If China was to demonstrate to the world that it was a reliable trading partner it could probably have outflanked Taiwan’s leadership, and made interest in Taiwan’s future wane. But curiously it has done the opposite. Continuing trade wars and petulant behaviour has tarnished China’s reputation for reliability. So Taiwan’s value to the rest of the world has increased. That petulant behaviour harks back to the problems with stable leadership, and playing long games, or not.
A Chinese attack on Taiwan would likely be killing the TSMC golden goose. Even if the foundries were undamaged, nobody (such as Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, etc.) in their right mind would continue placing orders with TSMC anymore, especially if the fabs were Chinese-owned now. Once it became clear that full-bore war was underway, the foundry industry would forever be Samsung and Intel’s.
A Chinese attack could deny TSMC’s services to other nations, but it wouldn’t get much TSMC stuff for itself. That goose would be dead.
And in fact there are two trends that are making war ever more slightly likely: the fact that the TSMC goose isn’t laying as many golden eggs for China anymore (such as cutting off chips to Huawei), and Samsung gaining more and more on TSMC by the year. Those two factors will make TSMC much less of deterrent to a Chinese attack than before.
Experience won the hard way suggests that any military force that has no recent experience performs poorly. We probably don’t know just how poorly, but there is not much history of inexperienced armies performing well.
What nobody has any real clue about is how the asymmetric nature of forces involved would engage and perform. History has shown us a number of times how an entire wing of a military force can be neutralised in a matter of hours by an unexpected asymmetric attack. We are entering a world of constant surveillance, hypersonic missiles, attack drones, and probably other new tech. Nobody has any clue how that might play out. But if there were to be a major engagement between powers, the entire conflict might be over in less than a day. Maybe with a victor, but just as likely with no victor, just a gigantic mess to sort out.
Not that you’re necessarily wrong, but isn’t that what proponents of overwhelming air power said before WW2?
I think they thought their overwhelming power would get them a quick win. I’m worried that the modern capabilities leave us with a fast lose-lose.
WW2 saw two naval fleets wiped out by air power in a few hours each. Protecting naval assets has simply gotten ever harder since then. Great for projecting force when you are the dominant player. Sitting ducks when things get nasty.
I see - yes, I do wonder just how vulnerable a surface fleet is to rocket attacks, and it’s entirely possible that the entire paradigm of carrier groups is obsolete in a war between “great powers”. Thank you for the clarification.
The X-factor, IIRC, is that Aegis (or Aegis-like systems) have never really been tested in real-life combat against an incoming swarm of enemy antiship missiles, as they were meant to. China possesses some Aegis-like destroyers for fleet defense, and the U.S. of course owns dozens. But whether they could actually fend off Taiwanese HF-3s or Chinese DF-21s, respectively, is a great deal of conjecture. Their performance may be the make-or-break factor in the naval war.
No they wouldn’t. Barely mentioned in any analysis of a China-Taiwan conflict is that the Taiwanese military is ineptly mismanaged with incredible morale problems and longstanding organizational issues.
The sad truth is that the ROC Army has trouble with training across the board. I have met artillery observers who never seen their own mortars fired, and shared drinks with an infantry officer who traveled to Thailand on his own dime to get basic TCCC training his own military did not offer. Those were professional soldiers; the situation with the conscripts is worse.
I would ask ex-conscripts questions like, “Would you know how to find cover if you were ambushed?”, “Were you ever trained on how to move around if the other side controlled the skies?”, “Were you ever taught what to do if the guy next to you was shot in the arm?,” “Did they ever tell you anything about the weapons, organization, or tactics of the PLA?” or “Did they teach you how to get from point A to point B without cell service, you know, using a map?” Negatives across the board. What they could tell me were stories of officers communicating orders through Whatsapp, time spent learning Army songs and doing yard-work instead of on maneuver drills, and how the totality of their marksmanship training consisted of firing one magazine from a single (prone) position on some eight to ten occasions.
The ROC Army has a shortage of bullets. Again and again I was told stories of officers who would fake training exercises in order to save on spare parts. [9] Han Kuang is a joke put on for propaganda purposes, not serious training. The military is risk adverse; real training might lead to training accidents, and a series of high profile accidents that led to unnecessary deaths has led them to soften training for the entire force. While reservist weapons stores are scattered across Taiwan, the million reservists that are supposed to use them are not drilled. Official reservists reported to me that they have no idea what they are supposed to do if ever actually called up. These troops exist only on paper.
World War II is a great example; look at the US forces arrayed to invade Okinawa, an island that was half a million people, 463 square miles, and defended by about 110k soldiers. It took the US 7 divisions of ground troops (3 USMC, 4 US Army), and two full naval task forces ( 39 aircraft carriers, 18 battleships, and even more destroyers and other ships)
Taiwan is much larger and defended by quite a few more people than that; invading Taiwan would be more on the order of a D-Day type invasion (10 divisions on D-Day itself, many more in the following days). And it would take the level of logistical preparation and sustainment that D-Day took as well- maybe not quite to the level of Mulberry harbors, but not too far off either.
I don’t see the Chinese being able to pull it off any more than the Germans realistically could have invaded the UK across the English Channel in 1940 or 1941.