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> TW stores TW food security and energy with strategic storage factored in is weeks. Also most likely stores will go boom, along with most of TW defensive infr

> TW stores TW food security and energy with strategic storage factored in is weeks. Also most likely stores will go boom, along with most of TW defensive infra. IMO biggest poor thinking in strategic writings is blockade is non kinetic, PRC not stupid enough to blockade TW and not defang island first. Hitting energy infra for refrigeration and water infra and timer starts ticking even sooner. IMO it's pretty obvious US/west going to lose more than PRC if 90%+ of highend semi already largely denied to PRC is gone. > sitting duck PLAN isn't going to do any of the blockading, it's going to be coast guard since PRC will treat it as a civil (war) law enforcement. But ultimately, US-PRC war isn't just a naval engagement, it's whole of military systems engagement, PRC has more landbased fires that can destroy USN than PLAN does. Nevermind enagaging PLAN ships means USN has to be within 1-2IC, aka within PRC A2D2 bubble. It doesn't matter USN shoots first, because PLA ISR will pickup launches and PLArocketforce will shoot minutes after, (assuming PLAN doesn't immediately counter fire) before USN ordnance even reaches target, or US shooters get away. In the end everyone will have a bunch of dead ships. PRC gladly trade PLAN for USN since US hegemony loses more without navy vs PRC. Who also has 600x more ship building to reconstitute navy. >blockade is the least likely scenario I think blockade should assumed default because it's so easily executable and starts timer on potential TW capitulation. It should be assumed that it's baseline response, on top of other scenarios, i.e. taking out US+partner war making abilities within 1IC. Whatever else happens, including nothing, the blockade will be happening on the background.

ls612 2y ago
Preemptively striking USN/USAF bases and forces in the first island chain is on one hand game-theoretically correct for the Chinese side as their goal is to win fast. On the other hand though, the one way to well and truly wake up the sleeping giant and unite it against you like nothing else can is to kill thousands of sailors and airmen on Day 1, as Japan learned the hard way. And much like Japan, the PRC can be strangled in a long drawn out naval conflict from outside of its A2AD bubble. China is not food or energy independent, imports most of its base metals for production uses, and Russia can only provide so much over land. There is no substitute for middle eastern oil or Australian and Brazilian iron for the PRC. All plausible scenarios of PRC victory in a Pacific escalation scenario have the flaw of the Chinese side assuming "We blow up all the US military assets in the region and the USA gives up". As soon as the US starts to fight back and move its economy to a war footing China will face the same crushing resource shortages that ruined Imperial Japan, while conversely there is little to nothing they can do to prevent the US from continuing to import every raw material it needs to fight and win a war.
- maxglute 2y ago
  > game-theoretically correct I think it maybe game theoretically correct after certain conditions met (points below), but it also opens all sorts of pyrrhic/pyrrhic conditions vs trying to convince US+co to giveup via making intervening in East Asia pyrrhicly difficult in first place. > PRC can be strangled ... > flaw US can increasingly be comparably strangled with conventional icmbs/prompt global strikes hitting US energy infra. People conflate expeditionary naval+air with the generalized goal of force project which is to degrade adversary homeland serenity, which PRC is going to increasingly do with missiles. People conflate resource autarky with resource security, realisitically vs PRC with conventional prompt global strike, US security exposure is basically Saudi - can have all the resources in the ground, but doesn't matter if it cannot be protected. Blockading ships or hitting energy producing infra is just disrupting warmaking on different points in supply chain. The biggest flaw in US strategic thinking, assuming PRC does not, and will not have CONUS strike options. Reality is once they do at scale (and they are pursuing this), US ability to intervene limited because they have to game theory loss of CONUS serenity and all the hegemonic benefits that entails, and whether that's worth it for TW, or east asia security presence. IMO that's PRC's medium term deterrance buildup/gametheory: 1. Build nuclear parity for conventional faceoff 2. Build out rocket based prompt global strike 3. Wait for US to accept there's little chance of winning IndoPac, and trying risks US homeland serenity at scale 4. Aim for regional hegemony -> slowly push US out of TW intervention then JP/SKR/PH etc
  - ls612 2y ago
    If the only CONUS strike capability the PRC has are conventional ICBMs (which btw they do not currently possess, all PRC ICBMs are currently only nuclear capable) then I will sleep well at night. The accuracy of ICBMs is not great and while that doesn’t matter for nuclear weapons it sure as hell matters for conventional warheads. Trying to target CONUS energy or industrial infrastructure with modified ICBMs mounting conventional large warheads is an even worse shot exchange problem than trying to yeet Kinzhal hypersonic missiles at Ukrainian civilian targets. The math very much does not check out launching 8 figure rockets with a CEP in the 100s of meters with conventional warheads even at stationary targets. And killing US civilians in the CONUS with missiles is even more guaranteed to ensure that the US public will support total war mobilization. At least the Kinzhal is somewhat accurate if a patriot battery doesn’t shoot it down. And this is completely ignoring the nuclear risks inherent in the idea of using conventional ICBMs (which is a whole can of worms I don’t want to open now).
ethbr1 2y ago
The easiest move is negotiating with the Philippines and Japan to base anti-ship assets northeast and southwest of Taiwan, at the extremes of the neighboring countries. As the addage went, 'Ships cannot stand against land-based air power.' (also now, missile power) If you burrowed some missiles into Ishigaki and the Batanes, similar to what Russia did in the Black Sea, it'd make for a very difficult blockade of the eastern side of Taiwan. And you can dig them into volcanic islands pretty well...
- maxglute 2y ago
  > very difficult blockade of the eastern side of Taiwan Essentially every inch of TW shores, including east side is within 7 minute range of being hit by PRC land based fires - PRC does not require naval or aviation elements to maintain a blockade, that's what makes it appealing, the ease. It's byproduct of TW proximity to mainland fires, short range ~1000km fires that PLA have in stupid abundance of that it's easy for PLA to shut down everything around TW from purely mainland, meaning any effort to break blockade requires escalating to mainland attacks, which is to put it mildly is hard. Anything prepositioned close to TW is also ~7 minutes away from being destroyed, and can't be resupplied in first place, and islands themselves too small to preposition enough hardware to matter. PRC A2D2 is not just water, it covers everything within missile range, which given their cruise missile gigafactory that makes 1000 components a day, is essentially everything in 1IC / 1500km, aka US can literally preposition all every missile cell in their inventory (including 10000+ VLS on ships) and a few weeks of PRC production is enough to satuate with spares for punitory follow up against US partners for hosting. Hence they so far haven't, outside a few token security theatre deployments / not in #s that matter. IMO negotiating basing for land missiles, especially road mobile the hardest - it's difficult geopolitical problem, not reliable (like carriers) / can be revoked pending PRC friendly gov or if host country gets cold feet / domestic politics doesn't allow, i.e. civilians/constituants NIMBY about US military deployment, even if they're pro US defense partnership. Can only put so much eggs in that basket, when perception of PRC force balance in theatre is increasingly overhwelming, host countries risk calculus change when PRC had a few 1000 missiles split among all targets years ago, to 1000 missiles per day, enough to deindustrialize them for cooperating/enabling US to intervene in Chinese civil war. IMO no easy move to break TW blockade, because it's contingent on winning total war against PRC mainland.

ls612 2y ago

Preemptively striking USN/USAF bases and forces in the first island chain is on one hand game-theoretically correct for the Chinese side as their goal is to win fast. On the other hand though, the one way to well and truly wake up the sleeping giant and unite it against you like nothing else can is to kill thousands of sailors and airmen on Day 1, as Japan learned the hard way. And much like Japan, the PRC can be strangled in a long drawn out naval conflict from outside of its A2AD bubble. China is not food or energy independent, imports most of its base metals for production uses, and Russia can only provide so much over land. There is no substitute for middle eastern oil or Australian and Brazilian iron for the PRC. All plausible scenarios of PRC victory in a Pacific escalation scenario have the flaw of the Chinese side assuming "We blow up all the US military assets in the region and the USA gives up". As soon as the US starts to fight back and move its economy to a war footing China will face the same crushing resource shortages that ruined Imperial Japan, while conversely there is little to nothing they can do to prevent the US from continuing to import every raw material it needs to fight and win a war.

maxglute 2y ago
> game-theoretically correct I think it maybe game theoretically correct after certain conditions met (points below), but it also opens all sorts of pyrrhic/pyrrhic conditions vs trying to convince US+co to giveup via making intervening in East Asia pyrrhicly difficult in first place. > PRC can be strangled ... > flaw US can increasingly be comparably strangled with conventional icmbs/prompt global strikes hitting US energy infra. People conflate expeditionary naval+air with the generalized goal of force project which is to degrade adversary homeland serenity, which PRC is going to increasingly do with missiles. People conflate resource autarky with resource security, realisitically vs PRC with conventional prompt global strike, US security exposure is basically Saudi - can have all the resources in the ground, but doesn't matter if it cannot be protected. Blockading ships or hitting energy producing infra is just disrupting warmaking on different points in supply chain. The biggest flaw in US strategic thinking, assuming PRC does not, and will not have CONUS strike options. Reality is once they do at scale (and they are pursuing this), US ability to intervene limited because they have to game theory loss of CONUS serenity and all the hegemonic benefits that entails, and whether that's worth it for TW, or east asia security presence. IMO that's PRC's medium term deterrance buildup/gametheory: 1. Build nuclear parity for conventional faceoff 2. Build out rocket based prompt global strike 3. Wait for US to accept there's little chance of winning IndoPac, and trying risks US homeland serenity at scale 4. Aim for regional hegemony -> slowly push US out of TW intervention then JP/SKR/PH etc
- ls612 2y ago
  If the only CONUS strike capability the PRC has are conventional ICBMs (which btw they do not currently possess, all PRC ICBMs are currently only nuclear capable) then I will sleep well at night. The accuracy of ICBMs is not great and while that doesn’t matter for nuclear weapons it sure as hell matters for conventional warheads. Trying to target CONUS energy or industrial infrastructure with modified ICBMs mounting conventional large warheads is an even worse shot exchange problem than trying to yeet Kinzhal hypersonic missiles at Ukrainian civilian targets. The math very much does not check out launching 8 figure rockets with a CEP in the 100s of meters with conventional warheads even at stationary targets. And killing US civilians in the CONUS with missiles is even more guaranteed to ensure that the US public will support total war mobilization. At least the Kinzhal is somewhat accurate if a patriot battery doesn’t shoot it down. And this is completely ignoring the nuclear risks inherent in the idea of using conventional ICBMs (which is a whole can of worms I don’t want to open now).

ethbr1 2y ago

The easiest move is negotiating with the Philippines and Japan to base anti-ship assets northeast and southwest of Taiwan, at the extremes of the neighboring countries. As the addage went, 'Ships cannot stand against land-based air power.' (also now, missile power) If you burrowed some missiles into Ishigaki and the Batanes, similar to what Russia did in the Black Sea, it'd make for a very difficult blockade of the eastern side of Taiwan. And you can dig them into volcanic islands pretty well...

maxglute 2y ago
> very difficult blockade of the eastern side of Taiwan Essentially every inch of TW shores, including east side is within 7 minute range of being hit by PRC land based fires - PRC does not require naval or aviation elements to maintain a blockade, that's what makes it appealing, the ease. It's byproduct of TW proximity to mainland fires, short range ~1000km fires that PLA have in stupid abundance of that it's easy for PLA to shut down everything around TW from purely mainland, meaning any effort to break blockade requires escalating to mainland attacks, which is to put it mildly is hard. Anything prepositioned close to TW is also ~7 minutes away from being destroyed, and can't be resupplied in first place, and islands themselves too small to preposition enough hardware to matter. PRC A2D2 is not just water, it covers everything within missile range, which given their cruise missile gigafactory that makes 1000 components a day, is essentially everything in 1IC / 1500km, aka US can literally preposition all every missile cell in their inventory (including 10000+ VLS on ships) and a few weeks of PRC production is enough to satuate with spares for punitory follow up against US partners for hosting. Hence they so far haven't, outside a few token security theatre deployments / not in #s that matter. IMO negotiating basing for land missiles, especially road mobile the hardest - it's difficult geopolitical problem, not reliable (like carriers) / can be revoked pending PRC friendly gov or if host country gets cold feet / domestic politics doesn't allow, i.e. civilians/constituants NIMBY about US military deployment, even if they're pro US defense partnership. Can only put so much eggs in that basket, when perception of PRC force balance in theatre is increasingly overhwelming, host countries risk calculus change when PRC had a few 1000 missiles split among all targets years ago, to 1000 missiles per day, enough to deindustrialize them for cooperating/enabling US to intervene in Chinese civil war. IMO no easy move to break TW blockade, because it's contingent on winning total war against PRC mainland.