Taiwan - China Brewing Conflict : Discussions

[Parthu]

Technology's changed a lot. Yasen-M's silent mode takes it up to 28 knots for example. New SSNs are capable of littoral operations.

That helps to hide from passive sonar in the deep seas. Doesn't do anything against active sonar in littorals.

That's why all new SSNs either have VLS out of the box or at least some provision for torpedo tube-launched long range missiles. So that they don't have to get into the littorals to perform anti-ship and/or land-attack.

Why?

They need something akin to the outer hull of Type-212CD to reliably defeat active sonar in littorals.

An anti-infantry bombing campaign is very different from an anti-shipping or anti-infra campaign. For the former, you need a lot of bombs. Not as much for the latter 'cause of the advanced weapons involved. That's why ship-killers carry just 8-16 AShMs.

USAF's 100+ B-21s and 200 NGADs are also timed to deal with a Chinese force that's far bigger and more advanced than today. And as I said, they don't need to blow up China, just 400 PLAN ships and a handful of ports and shipyards. The US have excess capability for that.

If you don't blow up China & the means of production, then everything will be rebuilt. On a war footing this time. In the meantime, production of drones & missiles (which have more than enough reach to attack anywhere in the first island chain) which can be more rapidly produced at pretty much any factory will continue to place Taiwan & first chain bases under constant attack.

You can't seriously expect the Chinese to fold & submit after just the initial round of attacks? They aren't Iraq.

The West also has all that.

Among the top 10 in the world today, only 3 are Chinese.

https://www.pandafastener.com/2023-top10-fastener-manufacturer-in-the-world.html

That's ownership. That's like saying Apple is an American company. Sure it is, but everyone knows most iPhones are made in China. And even the production in other countries can't really exist without sourcing a lot of things from China lower down the supply chain.

And even a lot of the production that does happen in the West relies on cheap Chinese steel imports as the raw material. Countries like UK are dismantling traditional steelmaking infrastructure to accommodate green goals, which will leave them able to produce only the highest-grade steels for specialist applications to secure enough margin. Production of low-end steel is no longer viable in the West.

Yes, they do. Who else is gonna provide area defense?

They don't need area defence, they just need point defence.

Taiwan is only <200 km away from the mainland. Coastal AD like HQ-9B can easily cover landing zones if needed. Once landed, the troops will have their own mobile & static AD. By that point most first-island chain Allied facilities would have been degraded significantly & a lot of carriers would be sunk, so US won't have sufficient assets to sustain a bombing campaign flying out of the second chain.

That's why they want B-21 & NGAD.

Not true. Although China's industry is big, most of it's useless for the purpose of war. US military production is very impressive, and can be scaled up in many areas. For example, they can manufacture 400 F-35s a year if necessary. At the current rate of production, China needs 20 years to catch up to the USN. If the USN increase their production by just 20-30%, the Chinese will likely never catch up. And if the USN decides to push retirement dates of ships and subs further, the distance will get much worse for the Chinese.

Chinese produce way more ships than the US does - PLAN commissions around 7-10 destroyers every year, USN commissions 1 or 2.

Talking of the kind they need to take Taiwan? Even more.

You're just looking at the existing commitments of industry. If a war between US & China actually breaks out, every single factory in China will be producing war material. That would eclipse the production capacity of the US several times over.

Without Taiwan, the seas will be highly contested because the PLAN can move ships from other 2 fleets to the north. Right now, Taiwan divides PLAN into two. With Taiwan gone, the entire area will belong to PLAN.

No because then then PLAN will have to engage the US & Allies in environments that would be totally advantageous to the Allies. It won't be a problem that China can solve by just throwing more infantry, landing craft or missiles at it.

Strategically, it makes perfect sense to simply use Taiwan as a bulwark to be used for dulling the Chinese blade, but ultimately something to be sacrificed. Kinda like the Baltics are for Russia. Nobody expects them to hold out forever, but being forward positioned allows them to wear down the Russians and give you time to prepare the more defensible Poland & Romania. That's Japan & SoKo in the INDOPAC context.

But trying to make your last stand on Taiwan itself is not doable - not yet. US isn't where it needs to be in order to do that.

You are arguing my point. That's what I'm saying too. Which makes a potential war with Taiwan a big one which will force the US to enter, and that will force Trump to fight.

Hell, the US (even Japan) will start sending troops over to Taiwan the minute China starts preparing for an invasion. If US presence in Taiwan doesn't serve as a deterrence, they are in for a fight.

The US will be involved - as a supplier of material to help Taiwan fight. Not as a party to the conflict directly. Very much like in Ukraine.

Yes. My point exactly. So this is why the Trump era is the best time for the Chinese to attack,

That's what I've been saying since the beginning:

Taiwan - China Brewing Conflict : Discussions

Pretty big development. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/01/china-suddenly-building-fleet-of-special-barges-suitable-for-taiwan-landings/ This new ship design is meant to navigate around the lack of landing beaches in Taiwan. Difficult to invade during Trump's era though. The last...

www.strategicfront.org

But you seemed to have a different opinion, saying that Chinese won't risk invading Taiwan because there's an unpredictable POTUS in office.

and the best time for Trump to pretend to be the next Roosevelt.

You seem to have the opinion that Trump is just a stupid, unthinking glory hound. He's not.

He would rather take the PR loss & make up for it by saying they only won because we didn't intervene, rather than get America into a war it's not guaranteed to win. Because regardless of how devastating the initial American attacks, Chinese will rebuild & continue the invasion until Taiwan is theirs. The US military isn't yet equipped with the kind of assets it needs to dislodge embanked PLA from Taiwan. They will be in a decade, but not now. The US economy isn't yet equipped to maintain their current standard of living without China. They might be in a decade, but not now.

Er... No. That's not how this works. This is an air and navy-led war for a short period of time. You are confused between what Taiwan War will be and a WW2.

And the US has a lot of war production.

If you think a US-China war over Taiwan will be over in a short while, you're mistaken.

Either it won't happen at all (even in the event of invasion, US would only supply Taiwan but won't directly engage China) or if it does happen, it'll be a multi-year, possibly multi-term conflict (Trump's successor would finish it) and the world that emerges out the other side would be entirely different.

 

[randomradio]

That helps to hide from passive sonar in the deep seas. Doesn't do anything against active sonar in littorals.

That's why all new SSNs either have VLS out of the box or at least some provision for torpedo tube-launched long range missiles. So that they don't have to get into the littorals to perform anti-ship and/or land-attack.

SSNs have become quiet enough to operate anywhere. VLS is for a totally different requirement.

They need something akin to the outer hull of Type-212CD to reliably defeat active sonar in littorals.

Nah. That's just a next gen design, nobody in East Asia has it.

If you don't blow up China & the means of production, then everything will be rebuilt. On a war footing this time. In the meantime, production of drones & missiles (which have more than enough reach to attack anywhere in the first island chain) which can be more rapidly produced at pretty much any factory will continue to place Taiwan & first chain bases under constant attack.

You can't seriously expect the Chinese to fold & submit after just the initial round of attacks? They aren't Iraq.

With the PLAN gone, even if they rebuild at current rates, ie, 10+ large ships a year, they will still take 20+ years.

That's ownership. That's like saying Apple is an American company. Sure it is, but everyone knows most iPhones are made in China. And even the production in other countries can't really exist without sourcing a lot of things from China lower down the supply chain.

And even a lot of the production that does happen in the West relies on cheap Chinese steel imports as the raw material. Countries like UK are dismantling traditional steelmaking infrastructure to accommodate green goals, which will leave them able to produce only the highest-grade steels for specialist applications to secure enough margin. Production of low-end steel is no longer viable in the West.

No, we are talking about local manufacturing.

The State of the U.S. Fastener Industry in 2021 - International Fastener Show

The U.S. fastener industry is a major contributor to the overall manufacturing sector and underpins most of the other hardware and production industries.

fastenershows.com

The U.S. fastener industry is a major contributor to the overall manufacturing sector and underpins most of the other hardware and production industries.

India's fastener industry is also domestic. It's one of those evergreen industries where govt makes pro-local policies.

They don't need area defence, they just need point defence.

Taiwan is only <200 km away from the mainland. Coastal AD like HQ-9B can easily cover landing zones if needed. Once landed, the troops will have their own mobile & static AD. By that point most first-island chain Allied facilities would have been degraded significantly & a lot of carriers would be sunk, so US won't have sufficient assets to sustain a bombing campaign flying out of the second chain.

That's why they want B-21 & NGAD.

Area defense is just 20-30 km. Point defense is less than 10 km. HQ-9B is useless against modern sea skimmers.

Chinese produce way more ships than the US does - PLAN commissions around 7-10 destroyers every year, USN commissions 1 or 2.

Talking of the kind they need to take Taiwan? Even more.

If you count the Constellation class, the US is building more destroyer types than that. Then there are American allies too. Japan's building 2 per year of the Taiwan types too. So the overall construction speed of both sides is pretty high, with the USN with a massive initial lead.

You're just looking at the existing commitments of industry. If a war between US & China actually breaks out, every single factory in China will be producing war material. That would eclipse the production capacity of the US several times over.

So what? You are assuming a war over Taiwan will last years, but it will barely last a month at sea.

The main argument is PLAN won't survive. So who cares about how many artillery shells they can produce every month. What's more important is naval production and all those ports required for exports that will all be shut down for years. Without exports, the entire Chinese economy will collapse on its own. That's why I said it will take them 40-50 years to get back on their feet.

No because then then PLAN will have to engage the US & Allies in environments that would be totally advantageous to the Allies. It won't be a problem that China can solve by just throwing more infantry, landing craft or missiles at it.

Strategically, it makes perfect sense to simply use Taiwan as a bulwark to be used for dulling the Chinese blade, but ultimately something to be sacrificed. Kinda like the Baltics are for Russia. Nobody expects them to hold out forever, but being forward positioned allows them to wear down the Russians and give you time to prepare the more defensible Poland & Romania. That's Japan & SoKo in the INDOPAC context.

But trying to make your last stand on Taiwan itself is not doable - not yet. US isn't where it needs to be in order to do that.

There is absolutely no advantage to be had in WESTPAC once Taiwan falls. The US has no mass presence in WESTPAC. If Taiwan falls, the USN falls back to Hawaii, part of the Third Island Chain. The Pacific will divide into two zones and Japan and SoKo will end up in the Chinese zone. PLAN will dominate the seas all the way up to beyond Guam.

The US will be involved - as a supplier of material to help Taiwan fight. Not as a party to the conflict directly. Very much like in Ukraine.

The Democrats assured military intervention and so have the Republicans. The only question is what Trump will do since he's a maverick.

That's what I've been saying since the beginning:

Taiwan - China Brewing Conflict : Discussions

Pretty big development. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/01/china-suddenly-building-fleet-of-special-barges-suitable-for-taiwan-landings/ This new ship design is meant to navigate around the lack of landing beaches in Taiwan. Difficult to invade during Trump's era though. The last...

www.strategicfront.org

But you seemed to have a different opinion, saying that Chinese won't risk invading Taiwan because there's an unpredictable POTUS in office.

Incorrect. My position is this is the best time for China to invade and if they are willing to sacrifice much, they will invade. If they don't within the next 5 years or so, the next opportunity is decades later. But Trump is such a big wild card that it's impossible to tell if he will just stick with defending Taiwan militarily at the minimum or make things way worse. So while you are saying Trump will not intervene, I'm saying Trump will not only intervene, he can even escalate to the point the Chinese never calculated, which is why they are unlikely to invade during his presidency.

You seem to have the opinion that Trump is just a stupid, unthinking glory hound. He's not.

He would rather take the PR loss & make up for it by saying they only won because we didn't intervene, rather than get America into a war it's not guaranteed to win. Because regardless of how devastating the initial American attacks, Chinese will rebuild & continue the invasion until Taiwan is theirs. The US military isn't yet equipped with the kind of assets it needs to dislodge embanked PLA from Taiwan. They will be in a decade, but not now. The US economy isn't yet equipped to maintain their current standard of living without China. They might be in a decade, but not now.

You haven't understood the scale of the generational loss the US will face if Taiwan is lost to China. Half the Pacific gone, alliances lost, rise of a new superpower, Cold War 2.0, two big political blocs and so on.

If you think a US-China war over Taiwan will be over in a short while, you're mistaken.

It will. There are limits to what they can do around an island. They can always fight a second time or a third time, but all these wars will be very quick because the endgame is lodgment. For example, Hitler lost the Western Front by the end of July 1944 due to the success of the Normandy invasion. With a Chinese lodgment established in Taiwan, most of the war will just be about retreating to Japan. Taiwan can't absorb years of fighting. At that point, the best the US can hope is the Chinese victory was Pyrrhic.

 

[Parthu]

SSNs have become quiet enough to operate anywhere. VLS is for a totally different requirement.

Their noise level is irrelevant. We're talking about defeating active sonar, not passive.

In the deep seas, you only really have to worry about passive sonar because nobody is foolish enough to go active constantly. In the littorals, you're surrounded by active emitters.

You can't risk a billion-dollar asset by sending it into the littorals against a near-peer opponent. The risk isn't worth it - it's much cheaper (and safer) to sink enemy ships with long-range missiles (supported by localized ISR where needed) instead.

Nah. That's just a next gen design, nobody in East Asia has it.

Which is why no sub fleet in East Asia is equipped to stop PLAN from taking Taiwan. What they can do, is to stop PLAN from operating freely outside the first island chain.

With the PLAN gone, even if they rebuild at current rates, ie, 10+ large ships a year, they will still take 20+ years.

The large ships are to deter US/Allies from intervening. They don't need the large ships to take Taiwan, only small ones, in large numbers.

No, we are talking about local manufacturing.

The State of the U.S. Fastener Industry in 2021 - International Fastener Show

The U.S. fastener industry is a major contributor to the overall manufacturing sector and underpins most of the other hardware and production industries.

fastenershows.com

The U.S. fastener industry is a major contributor to the overall manufacturing sector and underpins most of the other hardware and production industries.

India's fastener industry is also domestic. It's one of those evergreen industries where govt makes pro-local policies.

The only protected jobs & facilities are those exclusively catering to the existing defence/strategic industry. Remember that ruckus a while back when it was found that F-35 has Chinese-sourced components? That's the type of thing this local industry is meant to prevent. Not to substitute Chinese imports for the whole economy.

But if you're talking about a long war where the whole country pivots to a war economy, that's what you need to do. Scaling to that level requires a lot of time, at least a few years. But China would have that scale from the get-go.

Yes, US might eventually be able to ramp up to levels that match Chinese production, but by then Taiwan would be long gone and it won't be possible to dislodge dug-in PLA from the island.

Area defense is just 20-30 km. Point defense is less than 10 km. HQ-9B is useless against modern sea skimmers.

Area defence is much more than that. You can take advantage of offboard targeting with area defence.

Point defence is basically your horizon. That's all that's needed to defeat subsonic sea skimmers.

If you count the Constellation class, the US is building more destroyer types than that. Then there are American allies too. Japan's building 2 per year of the Taiwan types too. So the overall construction speed of both sides is pretty high, with the USN with a massive initial lead.

Allied yards in the region will be taken out just like the Chinese yards. Only the yards on continental US will remain. And their build rate is quite poor compared to what the Chinese have.

In a war economy, every shipyard in China will be building something for the PLAN. By that measure, US won't even be close. USN is actually deeply worried about this.

So what? You are assuming a war over Taiwan will last years, but it will barely last a month at sea.

The main argument is PLAN won't survive. So who cares about how many artillery shells they can produce every month. What's more important is naval production and all those ports required for exports that will all be shut down for years. Without exports, the entire Chinese economy will collapse on its own. That's why I said it will take them 40-50 years to get back on their feet.

You seem to be totally dismissive of China's ability to rebuild. Or you think that for some reason, they won't rebuild.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1880620121498267722

And you seem to think as though all Allied ships & facilities on the first & second island chains will have total freedom to continue swatting down Chinese infrastructure whereas the truth is, most of them will be busy defending their own infrastructure & assets from nearly endless numbers of Chinese missiles & drones.

If the invasion of Taiwan does start, the only way it'll be over quickly is if the US/Allies don't do anything at all. Not even resupply Taiwan.

If Allies decide to get involved, then China won't be able to stop until they've either taken the island or till their entire means of production are permanently destroyed i.e. 'blowing up China' that we talked about. That's a long war. With the possibility of things going nuclear.

There is absolutely no advantage to be had in WESTPAC once Taiwan falls. The US has no mass presence in WESTPAC. If Taiwan falls, the USN falls back to Hawaii, part of the Third Island Chain. The Pacific will divide into two zones and Japan and SoKo will end up in the Chinese zone. PLAN will dominate the seas all the way up to beyond Guam.

No, they'll dominate inside the first island chain & will be able to project power up till the second.

But this is the price for letting China grow to these proportions - you can't make that go away for free. If your policy is heavily Eurocentric with the only thing in sight being the Russian boogeyman, you'll end up paying the price for it somewhere else.

This is the price.

The Democrats assured military intervention and so have the Republicans. The only question is what Trump will do since he's a maverick.

He's a smart maverick so he'll do the smart thing.

Incorrect. My position is this is the best time for China to invade and if they are willing to sacrifice much, they will invade. If they don't within the next 5 years or so, the next opportunity is decades later. But Trump is such a big wild card that it's impossible to tell if he will just stick with defending Taiwan militarily at the minimum or make things way worse. So while you are saying Trump will not intervene, I'm saying Trump will not only intervene, he can even escalate to the point the Chinese never calculated, which is why they are unlikely to invade during his presidency.

You contradicted yourself.

You're saying the Chinese will invade if they're willing to sacrifice much, but then say they're afraid of escalation.

But if they're afraid of escalation and decide to wait it out, the next opportunity may never come - and even if it does come, the current trajectory of things will mean that they'd be fighting a much more disadvantaged battle if they wait Trump out.

The only smart thing to do is to invade in Trump's term. IF they're not okay with being boxed-in by US forever.

You haven't understood the scale of the generational loss the US will face if Taiwan is lost to China. Half the Pacific gone, alliances lost, rise of a new superpower, Cold War 2.0, two big political blocs and so on.

If the Chinese invade, all that is inevitable. A war with China, were it to happen before 2035, will also result in a generational loss of economy, the tech/services boom will disappear and the average American will be working a blue collar job in a factory, not a white-collar job in an air-conditioned office. Essentially set the country back by 60 years.

Keeping Taiwan out of China's hands is a high-level geostrategic goal that Trump, Republicans, Democrats might all agree with. But destroying the living standards of the average American to achieve that goal isn't a sellable idea in this day & age. If Trump tries that, he'll lose all political capital.

And still, there won't be a guarantee that the objective of defending Taiwan will succeed - because US/Allies aren't equipped for that. They're only equipped for a different kind of warfighting. Current plans call for US to be equipped for this kind of fight by around the middle of next decade.

If the US build-out of China-focused capabilities is complete, then they might be ready to take on China without necessarily having to destroy their living standards to do so - that's the kind of position Trump wants to put the US in.

But that takes time. If China decides not to wait, there's not much Trump can do other than support Taiwan with supplies and then save face by saying the Chinese only succeeded because we didn't intervene.

With a Chinese lodgment established in Taiwan, most of the war will just be about retreating to Japan. Taiwan can't absorb years of fighting. At that point, the best the US can hope is the Chinese victory was Pyrrhic.

That's how it's gonna be - if the deterrence fails and China invades, Taiwan is effectively lost.

There's nothing anyone can do about it, unless they're prepared for a long war with China.