The rest of the fleet would still exist, though, and if we felt the need, we would and could bring them in. It’s likely that a third of our fleet would be more than sufficient to easily deal with China’s navy, but if it wasn’t, we’d have options.
Actually, the tenets of the theory of Assured Destruction (the “Mutual” was added by Herman Kahn, a critic of the doctrine, as a way of mocking the notion by creating a mildly amusing acronym) can never be satisfied in a real world conflict and isn’t even applicable to a multi-polar conflict where there is no expectation of a stable Nash equilibrium. Even if the parties are sufficiently rational to recognize the futility of engaging in a nuclear exchange, the “Assured” part requires that they be committed to using their nuclear arsenal in response to a perceived disarming preemptive strike. In a real world conflict, uncertainty over the effectiveness of the opposing arsenal(s) and a lack of complete information about the propensity to use them would result in a mandate to use one’s arsenal in a case of suspected attack even if there is substantial uncertainty about verifying the attack. In wargaming simulations involving actual decision-makers, any use of nuclear weapons, even in a tactical or ‘warning’ sense invariably results in a widening conflict that concludes with strategic nuclear exchange and global consequences.
No; this would be such a strategically vulnerable move that it would never happen. If the United States were not able to deal with a hypothetical Pacific conflict with the extant 3rd and 7th Fleets (and perhaps elements moved over from the Med 5th Fleet) and not able to bring elements of the Pacific Reserve Fleet on line (or they were determined to be insufficient to deal with the threat) the United States would have to look at either withdrawing from the conflict or elevating to a strategic response (the literal “nuclear option”).
Stranger
There is no doubt that America is a heavy favoritwe to win any major naval engagement with China. But invading? Or stopping China from invading a neighbor? That’s a whole different thing.
For one thing, if America engages with its Navy in the east, it has to maintain a huge logistical tail across the ocean . As in WWII, staging islands will come under attack, surface supply vessels will be subject to attack, etc.
And we have yet to see how effective carriers will be in the next war. First, the high threat environment to the ships may keep them suitably far from the action (see: Russia’s Navy), and an aircraft carrier isn’t very useful if the aircraft can’t fly because of the SAM environment. Most of Russia’s air force has stayed out of the fight in Ukraine because they can’t attain air superiority due to the massive numbers of Manpads and mobile SAMs in the country.
We got spoiled fighting second-class armies in the Middle East. It made America look incredibly powerful. I’m not sure the same result will obtain today. The US military isn’t what it was, and other militaries are getting better.
One risk to America’s military is that it has often relied on fewer, but very advanced weapons whereas other nations necessarily focus on quantity. That makes it hard to win a war of attrition, which they often seem to devolve down to these days.
Losing a million dollar Patriot missile shooting down a $1,000 drone is not exactly a win. And Patriots take years to replace and we’re already running low on them. A perfectly viable strategy for China could be to just keep firing cheap missiles at carrier groups until they run out of anti-missile resources. If it takes 50 SAM launches to bring down an F-35, it’s probably a win for China.
And we have no idea what surprises are in store in the next war. No one knew Ukraine would turn into trench warface with drones. Battle plans never survive first contact with the enemy, yada yada.
Tldr: China can’t invade us, we can’t invade China. China would get crushed if it tried to intervene militarily in the Americas (say, to help Venezuela take Guyana or something) and we wanted to stop them, but whether or not we could stop China from taking Taiwan or other countries is not clear.
By ‘we’ I mean the western military alliances. But if you say just America, it’s about the same.
A war against China will be anything but a cakewalk. To hint otherwise is silly or completely uninformed.
As someone up thread pointed out, not all of the U. S. Navy will be available. Only 70% of the U. S. Navy is on the west coast. Virtually 100% of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is in theatre. That’s likely to remain the case throughout the war.
Additionally, this won’t be navy vs. navy. It will be U. S. Navy vs. the PLAN, the People’s Liberations Army Air Force (PLAFF) and PRC air defenses. There will be allied support on the U. S. side, and much less on the PRC side, but how much, how soon, and for how long is difficult to gauge. This will be especially true once the fur starts to fly.
Distance is in the favor of the PLAN as well. Taiwan is 400 miles from the PRC. It’s 5,300 miles from Pearl and 7,000 from San Diego. That’s 7,000 miles from the most secure fuel, weapons reloads, spare part, food, Sailors etc. Yes there are allied and U. S. facilities closer, but that distance is significant.
This would be the most trying test of the U. S. Navy since 1945. Ships and aircraft lost will be significant. The last time the U. S. Navy lost a ship to hostile action was during the Vietnam War so that will be a shock to the American public, most of whom couldn’t point to Taiwan on a map.
And while no one expects a long war, for the first time since - ever(??) - the U.S. will face an adversary that can out produce it in terms of ships, planes, weapons and steel.
There is a lot of uncertainty in this scenario. But one certainty is that this war will be bloody for all players.
The main advantage for the U.S. in such a scenario is that thwarting an amphibious invasion is a lot easier than carrying one out.
Such an invasion requires complex joint warfare with all kinds of factors and things that have to go right. The U.S. and Taiwan, on the other hand, only have to throw a wrench in enough things to make the invasion go awry. If enough of the invasion fleet is sunk, the invasion might fail. If enough Chinese supplies/forces/harbors/depots are struck in China itself, the invasion might fail. If enough firepower can hit the Chinese forces as they disembark at the beaches, the invasion might fail. etc. etc.
To me, this is by far the largest factor. China has no experience with this, or any large scale operations for that matter. China’s performance in peace keeping operations in Africa hasn’t been stellar when the bullets started to fly. There is little reason to believe that it would be better in a scaled up operation against a modern military.
I mean its a classic case of naval wars being fought on the sea, not on paper. On paper the US absolutely can defeat China. But you don’t actually know the relative strengths of the two navies in practice until the shooting starts. I mean it would be fairly shocking if China was able to beat the US in Taiwan or the Philippines in 2023, but there isn’t big neon sign that comes on when one military surpasses another. On paper Russia could have defeated Japan in 1904 but that’s not what happened.
I completely concur that a successful amphibious invasion is very difficult to accomplish. I’ll go a step further and state that keeping that invasion force viable over time, supplied over contested air- and sea-space is equally challenging.
But I’m worried about the fall out over the larger sea battle that will take place and the worldwide fallout from that.
Yeah far more important than the outcome of the naval battle is the fact that two nuclear powers with enough strategic nuclear weapons to wipe out humanity would be in a shooting war. Neither side would go into it (hopefully) with the expectation of using nuclear weapons, but if either side suffered a devastating loss (in a Battle of Tushima way) the chances of the losing side using nukes would increase dramatically.
I wouldn’t make that much of an absolute statement in 2023 … for all we learned the past 20 months or so …
they might be a real professional, hard fighting troop, but they might just be as (in)competent as the russian prison army
probably true, but I also can visualize China going “full Bakhmut” on Taiwan (from the distance, for say 6 - 18 months) … and once things soften up take next steps
I reckon the stuff with Taiwain is just diplomatic play over “spheres of influence”.
That part of Asia is rife with disupted territory. Russia grabbed the Kuril Islands at the tail end of WWII and Japan would like them back (not gonna happen).
I was surprised to read that China even is trying to gain some say in the Arctic. If that’s really happening Putin is getting something else out of Xi,
If Tawain decides (perhaps unwisely) to secede what’s going to happen? China’s Navy sets sail -vs- the only country (USA) that has a fleet capable of repelling them? (that’s bad). Or a fight for air superiority (also bad). Nukes (very bad). Other countries involvement (who probably have nukes so also bad).
Yet all those things will happen if China decides now is the time to declare whatever is actually the China Sea is their territory.
No oil or gas involved so won’t happen.
The Republic of China (‘Taiwan’) has long considered itself to be a distinct political and geographic authority from the People’s Republic of China, and regarded itself to be the real government of China until 1988.
An invasion of the islands of Taiwan by the PRC would be a disastrous move for both nations, and unlikely to succeed without both heavy casualties and an extirpative blockade of mainland China by multiple parties, partially because it is in no ones’ interest to see this conflict but also because everybody hates the PRC. But the US Navy could not prevent it, and would be placing itself in grave risk of challenging a PLAN blockade of Taiwan because while the USN has breadth, it does not have operational depth in the East China Sea, and is struggling to keep the 7th Fleet at full operational strength.
Stranger
Quite true. But of course it’s not necessarily China who are Russia in this metaphor. It’s the US Navy that are the ones who are overwhelming on paper but might be as effective as that Russian prison army in practice. Unlikely right now but when was the last time the US Navy had to fight a significant naval opponent in a conventional naval battle?
ETA: That is a bit sad to hear yet no doubt it is true.
I had to look that word up. Not that it matters China is a permanent UN security member and will (along with their new Arctic partner Russia) veto anything. There will be call for sanctions as that is all any nation is willing to do nowadays. I do agree it would be disastrous for both nations and Wal-mart.
War may well happen.
Because there is one thing that is far more important than oil or gas:
That thing is called “national pride” (or patriotism, or manifest destiny,russian Mir, or jihad, etc)
China sees the existence of rebel Taiwan as a deep,deep insult, and yes, a threat. It is a threat to the pride and rightful place of China and the communist party.
They feel as fanatic about this as ISIS and the Taliban feel about killing the infidels.
Forcing China to accept the existence of Taiwan is as offensive as , say, forcing the Taliban to let women wear halter tops and shorts.
There is one difference, in that the current Chinese leadership is capable of behaving rationally, (unlike Mao’s leadership).
So they will only attack Taiwan after they make the rational and measured decision that they have enough ships and ammunition, etc.
But the attack will come. The only question is when.
I think Russia proved to be incompetent because no one guessed just how inept they are at conducting large-scale ground operations against a determined and technologically equivalent opponent.
It’s not like the US Navy is going to suddenly forget how to launch cruise missiles or conduct aircraft carrier operations. And AFAIK, the Navy is still pretty solid when it comes to general discipline and professionalism.
I think it’s less about “competency” as does China have some sort of tactic or strategy that the US Navy is inadequately prepared for or is there a weakness in our own capabilities the Navy has not realized. Hypersonic missiles are an obvious one, but is there may be others that aren’t on our radar (so to speak). Cheap stealthy drones or quiet conventional submarines may be a greater threat.
Or maybe the use of the worlds largest and most expensive warships ever built is in itself an inherent strategic weakness as a USS Ford class carrier and it’s battlegroup can only be one place at a time and the sinking of one would be a military and political disaster.
And one thing that came out of the Ukraine war is the phenomenal rate at which Ukraine and Russia have been blowing through ammunition. So one thing that should be in China’s calculus is the sheer number of things like artillery shells required to invade a modern country and the challenges of keeping an army supplied by sea. Anti ship missiles are always a lot cheaper than ships.
I would think that this would be an even greater challenge for China if they were to invade. As I understand it, Taiwan is far outside of any land based artillery range. So to keep up the level of bombardment we have seen in Ukraine, China would be forced to use naval based guns, and missiles. Is that realistic based on China’s current capabilities?
China has a LOT of missiles that could hit Taiwan from mainland China. Taiwan is only 100 miles from the Chinese coast.
For example, China has between 500 and 600 DF-11 missiles which have a range of about 300 km, and carry an 800 kg warhead.
The DF-12 has slightly shorter range and a 400 kg warhead. It’s similar to the Iskander issiles being used in Ukraine.
The DF-15 has a range of 600 km, and a 500 kg warhead. China has 300-350 of them.
The DF-16 is a longer range, more powerful missile that can go about 1,000 km and can carry a 1,000 to 1,500 kg warhead.
Also, China is deploying MLRS rocket launchers along the Taiwan strait, and they can also reach Taiwan.
China deploys PHL-16 MLRS along Taiwan Strait.
Several of the systems above can be fitted with anti-ship missiles as well. So if China decided to invade Taiwan they would likely use those rocket launchers to closevthe strait to any other shipping and pummel Taiwanese naval forces, then soften up the landing zones with MLRS and other rockets and missiles fired from the mainland while taking out command and control, radar, and other high value targets with medium range missiles. Then try to land, establish a beachhead, bring in the artillery and start pummelling,
Yeah this is exactly my point. Not that the US Navy might fail in exactly the same way the Russian army failed in Ukraine, but that, just as with the Ukraine war there could be other factors beside the raw numbers on paper that could decide the outcome.
One issue that has yet to be discussed is that US Naval operations are highly dependent upon data and communications using space assets, i.e. satellites, and observers of space warfare capabilities will note that China is on the forefront of spacewar capability; perhaps not quite on par with the United States, but conceivably capable enough of taking out many tactical surveillance satellites that are used to observe maritime operations in real time, as well as interfering with communications and potentially even denial of crucial azimuths in Low Earth Orbit. A conflict in which the US Navy no longer has eyes in the sky and reliable satellite communications, going into a constrained area where China has land-based air power and anti-ship missiles is not favorable even for a theoretically superior naval force, much less one that is going to have difficulty fielding and coordinating at full fleet strength. It would certainly result in holding US carrier groups back far enough to be out of range of Chinese anti-ship missiles, which means limited air coverage, ergo, the USN can do little to aid Taiwan directly against an invasion fleet and would struggle to bust a blockade.
The East China Sea is also relatively shallow (most of it north and west of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland is less than 200 meters depth) and has a variable thermocline which may not allow US submarines to use the tactics employed in the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with moving below the layer to mask radiated noise, which would limit operational speed. This area isn’t well-mapped by USN charts, while I suspect the PLAN has been working on producing detailed seafloor surveys; as a consequence, even with all of COMSUBRON Eleven added to the squadrons based out of Guam and Pearl, the USN submarine fleet would be outnumbered and operating in ‘away’ waters that PLAN subs and anti-submarine surface ships are far more familiar with. It is an unenviable situation even if you assume that the US Navy can field in full force with well-trained and led crew, and the even if you think that the Chinese are not at the same level of ostensible performance.
Stranger