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What about a siege? The more I look at it, the more the ancient siege seems more likely than an invasion. China doesn't want to destroy Taiwan. Plus, destroy
by ijidak 4y ago
What about a siege?
The more I look at it, the more the ancient siege seems more likely than an invasion.
China doesn't want to destroy Taiwan.
Plus, destroying non-Taiwanese vessels and planes trying to break the siege seems like it would be more palatable to Chinese leaders' domestic audience.
China seemed to do a dress rehearsal for this strategy a month or two ago.
- CamperBob2 4y agoThe US would recreate the Berlin Airlift in that case. If China wants to shoot down US military cargo aircraft, well... they might as well have launched a full-scale invasion. It will cost them just as much.
- sudosysgen 4y agoThe Chinese would just bomb the airfields in Taiwan.
- refurb 4y agoI’m not even sure that would be needed. Just send a US ship with escort to Taiwan. China would have to attack US military ships to stop it. I doubt it would happen.
- sudosysgen 4y agoThat's not what they're going to do. They're going to lay thousands of smart mines. The US military ships will have to either spend weeks demining, shoot down Chinese mine-layers and fire the first shot, commit suicide, or give up.
- refurb 4y agoSure, then the US can just demine the area. It won't take weeks to clear a path.
- sudosysgen 4y agoI don't think you understand how modern naval mines work. In relatively shallow waters, bottom mines can be employed, which are not visible on sonar, and they use a variety of sensors so that it is incredibly difficult to trick them into detonating. Others burrow underground at higher depths still and then fire a torpedo at passing ships. So generally modern mines have to be disabled one-by-one, and without firing on Chinese forces, the Chinese would be laying more mines than the US Navy can disable. It will definitely take weeks if a path is ever completed. Even fairly primitive mines in relatively smaller numbers (scarcely more than a thousand - China has at least 100,000) in the Iraq War were able to score a mission kill and a major hit on US ships. And that was without US ships actually docking in Iraq. Do you know how long it took to sweep just over 1000 of those quite primitive mines in Iraq? Around 3 months.
- refurb 4y agoNo doubt it took long to sweep those mines in Iraq, but apparently it didn't stop the US Navy from participating in both Iraq Wars?
- sudosysgen 4y agoThe US Navy just stayed beyond the range of the mines, they really didn't need to get through.