danielboon
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Update China cyber attacks on Taiwan infrastructure including train stations
View: https://mobile.twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1557083451588845578?cxt=HHwWlIC9mcjJ75srAAAA
WAR CHINA THREATENS TO INVADE TAIWAN
- Thread starter danielboon
- Start date
danielboon
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China launches blockade exercises around Taiwan
View: https://mobile.twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1557091491864010752?cxt=HHwWgICz9cid85srAAAA
okie-carbine
Veteran Member
Those digital paint schemes are pretty slick looking.
northern watch
TB Fanatic
From my email inbox Bloomberg Evening Briefing August 9 2022
As China holds extensive and increasingly aggressive military exercises off of Taiwan, a group of American defense experts in Washington are focused on a simulation of a hypothetical war between the US and China over the island democracy. A US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, would come at a huge cost, they’ve found. “Under most—though not all—scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.” In 18 of the 22 rounds of the exercise so far, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US surface fleet. The group has yet to project the number of dead in such a non-nuclear conflict, or the economic shock waves that would almost certainly result. —David E. Rovella
As China holds extensive and increasingly aggressive military exercises off of Taiwan, a group of American defense experts in Washington are focused on a simulation of a hypothetical war between the US and China over the island democracy. A US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, would come at a huge cost, they’ve found. “Under most—though not all—scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.” In 18 of the 22 rounds of the exercise so far, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US surface fleet. The group has yet to project the number of dead in such a non-nuclear conflict, or the economic shock waves that would almost certainly result. —David E. Rovella
northern watch
TB Fanatic
What-If DC War Game Maps Huge Toll of a Future US-China War Over Taiwan
A think-tank exercise with former Pentagon officials foresees grim results.
Tony Capaccio
Bloomberg
August 8, 2022 at 8:30 PM EDT
As China waged extensive military exercises off of Taiwan last week, a group of American defense experts in Washington was focused on their own simulation of an eventual — but for now entirely hypothetical — US-China war over the island.
The unofficial what-if game is being conducted on the fifth floor of an office building not far from the White House, and it posits a US military response to a Chinese invasion in 2026. Even though the participants bring an American perspective, they are finding that a US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, could come at a huge cost.
“The results are showing that under most — though not all — scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where the war games are being held. “However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.”
In sessions that will run through September, retired US generals and Navy officers and former Pentagon officials hunch like chess players over tabletops along with analysts from the CSIS think tank. They move forces depicted as blue and red boxes and small wooden squares over maps of the Western Pacific and Taiwan. The results will be released to the public in December.
Warplanes of the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People's Liberation Army PLA conduct operations during joint combat training exercises around Taiwan, on Aug. 7.
Photographer: Gong Yulong/Xinhua /Getty Images
The not-necessarily-so assumption used in most of the scenarios: China invades Taiwan to force unification with the self-governed island, and the US decides to intervene heavily with its military. Also assumed but far from certain: Japan grants expanded rights to use US bases located on its territory, while stopping short of intervening directly unless Japanese land is attacked. Nuclear weapons aren’t used in the scenarios, and the weapons available are based on capabilities the nations have demonstrated or have concrete plans to deploy by 2026.
China’s test-firing of missiles in recent days in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan underscored a Chinese capability that’s already assumed in the gameplay.
In 18 of the 22 rounds of the game played to this point, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US and Japanese surface fleet and destroy “hundreds of aircraft on the ground,” according to Cancian, a former White House defense budget analyst and retired US Marine. “However, allied air and naval counterattacks hammer the exposed Chinese amphibious and surface fleet, eventually sinking about 150 ships.”
“The reason for the high US losses is that the United States cannot conduct a systematic campaign to take down Chinese defenses before moving in close,” he said. “The United States must send forces to attack the Chinese fleet, especially the amphibious ships, before establishing air or maritime superiority,” he said. “To get a sense of the scale of the losses, in our last game iteration, the United States lost over 900 fighter/attack aircraft in a four-week conflict. That’s about half the Navy and Air Force inventory.”
The Chinese missile force “is devastating while the inventory lasts” so US submarines and bombers with long-range missiles “are particularly important,” he said. “For the Taiwanese, anti-ship missiles are important, surface ships and aircraft less so.” Surface ships “have a hard time surviving as long as the Chinese have long-range missiles available,” Cancian said.
The game players haven’t made any estimates so far on the number of lives that would be lost or the sweeping economic impact of such a conflict between the US and China, the world’s two largest economies.
Taiwan’s defense capabilities are an especially important part of the calculations, because its forces would be responsible for blunting and containing Chinese landings from the south — a scenario played out in the simulation.
“The success or failure of the ground war depends entirely on the Taiwanese forces,” Cancian said. “In all game iterations so far, the Chinese could establish a beachhead but in most circumstances cannot expand it. The attrition of their amphibious fleet limits the forces they can deploy and sustain. In a few instances, the Chinese were able to hold part of the island but not conquer the entire island.”
Anti-ship missiles — US-made Harpoons and Taiwanese-made weapons that the island democracy fields — would play a large role in the early destruction of the Chinese amphibious landing force, while Taiwan’s Navy and half of its air force would be destroyed in the first days of the conflict, according to the modeling so far.
What-If War Game for a US-China Conflict Sees a Heavy Toll - Bloomberg
A think-tank exercise with former Pentagon officials foresees grim results.
Tony Capaccio
Bloomberg
August 8, 2022 at 8:30 PM EDT
As China waged extensive military exercises off of Taiwan last week, a group of American defense experts in Washington was focused on their own simulation of an eventual — but for now entirely hypothetical — US-China war over the island.
The unofficial what-if game is being conducted on the fifth floor of an office building not far from the White House, and it posits a US military response to a Chinese invasion in 2026. Even though the participants bring an American perspective, they are finding that a US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, could come at a huge cost.
“The results are showing that under most — though not all — scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where the war games are being held. “However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.”
In sessions that will run through September, retired US generals and Navy officers and former Pentagon officials hunch like chess players over tabletops along with analysts from the CSIS think tank. They move forces depicted as blue and red boxes and small wooden squares over maps of the Western Pacific and Taiwan. The results will be released to the public in December.
Warplanes of the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People's Liberation Army PLA conduct operations during joint combat training exercises around Taiwan, on Aug. 7.
Photographer: Gong Yulong/Xinhua /Getty Images
The not-necessarily-so assumption used in most of the scenarios: China invades Taiwan to force unification with the self-governed island, and the US decides to intervene heavily with its military. Also assumed but far from certain: Japan grants expanded rights to use US bases located on its territory, while stopping short of intervening directly unless Japanese land is attacked. Nuclear weapons aren’t used in the scenarios, and the weapons available are based on capabilities the nations have demonstrated or have concrete plans to deploy by 2026.
China’s test-firing of missiles in recent days in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan underscored a Chinese capability that’s already assumed in the gameplay.
In 18 of the 22 rounds of the game played to this point, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US and Japanese surface fleet and destroy “hundreds of aircraft on the ground,” according to Cancian, a former White House defense budget analyst and retired US Marine. “However, allied air and naval counterattacks hammer the exposed Chinese amphibious and surface fleet, eventually sinking about 150 ships.”
“The reason for the high US losses is that the United States cannot conduct a systematic campaign to take down Chinese defenses before moving in close,” he said. “The United States must send forces to attack the Chinese fleet, especially the amphibious ships, before establishing air or maritime superiority,” he said. “To get a sense of the scale of the losses, in our last game iteration, the United States lost over 900 fighter/attack aircraft in a four-week conflict. That’s about half the Navy and Air Force inventory.”
The Chinese missile force “is devastating while the inventory lasts” so US submarines and bombers with long-range missiles “are particularly important,” he said. “For the Taiwanese, anti-ship missiles are important, surface ships and aircraft less so.” Surface ships “have a hard time surviving as long as the Chinese have long-range missiles available,” Cancian said.
The game players haven’t made any estimates so far on the number of lives that would be lost or the sweeping economic impact of such a conflict between the US and China, the world’s two largest economies.
Taiwan’s defense capabilities are an especially important part of the calculations, because its forces would be responsible for blunting and containing Chinese landings from the south — a scenario played out in the simulation.
“The success or failure of the ground war depends entirely on the Taiwanese forces,” Cancian said. “In all game iterations so far, the Chinese could establish a beachhead but in most circumstances cannot expand it. The attrition of their amphibious fleet limits the forces they can deploy and sustain. In a few instances, the Chinese were able to hold part of the island but not conquer the entire island.”
Anti-ship missiles — US-made Harpoons and Taiwanese-made weapons that the island democracy fields — would play a large role in the early destruction of the Chinese amphibious landing force, while Taiwan’s Navy and half of its air force would be destroyed in the first days of the conflict, according to the modeling so far.
What-If War Game for a US-China Conflict Sees a Heavy Toll - Bloomberg
Last edited:
jward
passin' thru
China upgrades nuke test site with an eye on Taiwan
Gabriel Honrada
6-8 minutes
Satellite photos obtained by Nikkei last week show that China is rapidly expanding its nuclear test facilities in western Xinjiang, sparking fears of a renewed nuclear arms race with the US as tensions boil over Taiwan.
The Nikkei report states that a satellite hovering at 450 kilometers detected extensive construction at the Lop Nur test site, a dried salt lakebed in the arid and restive Xinjiang region that borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
The report said that China may be building a sixth tunnel for underground testing, evidenced by broken rocks piled nearby and extensive coverings erected on a nearby mountainside. The satellite photos also show power cables, possible storage facilities for high explosives and unpaved roads from command centers.
An unnamed expert from US private geospatial analysis company AllSource Analysis told Nikkei that these developments enable China to conduct nuclear-related tests anytime. The power lines and road system now connect Lop Nur’s western military nuclear test facilities to new possible test areas in the east.
Nikkei suggested that evidence of a sixth test tunnel points to China’s planned resumption of nuclear tests, the last of which was conducted in 1996.
Nobumasa Akiyama, a professor of East Asian security at Hitotsubashi University, told Nikkei that China’s accelerated development of the Lop Nur test site means it intends to deter US intervention in an invasion of Taiwan by threatening the use of small nuclear weapons.
Nikkei also notes that maritime control will be the primary military issue in any invasion of Taiwan. Small nuclear weapons with limited strike capabilities would be sufficient for China to ward off US aircraft carriers. This strategy mirrors that of Russia in Ukraine, with its threat of nuclear escalation used as strategic cover to pursue conventional military operations.
While still trailing the US in nuclear weapons strength, experts say China is increasing its capability across the board. Credit: Handout.
The development may be part of China’s more extensive efforts to modernize its nuclear arsenal for a Taiwan scenario. Asia Times has previously reported on other stories regarding China’s nuclear arsenal, including its building of land-based nuclear silos, rail-based nukes, ballistic missile submarines and nuclear-armed stealth bombers at a rapid-fire pace.
Taiwanese and US officials have opined that China may invade Taiwan sooner than anticipated, suggesting dates as soon as 2025, 2027 and 2030.
“By 2025, China will bring the cost and attrition to its lowest. It has the capacity now, but it will not start a war easily, having to take many other things into consideration,” said Taiwan’s Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng in a 2021 article in The Guardian.
General Mark Milley, US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted in a 2021 US Naval Institute (USNI) article that China wants to acquire the military capabilities to invade and hold Taiwan by 2027. His assessment was based in part by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech calling for an acceleration of China’s military modernization and capabilities to seize Taiwan.
Moreover, US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines mentioned in a 2022 CNN article that Taiwan faces an acute China threat between the present and 2030, noting that China is working hard to put itself in a military position to take Taiwan over a US military intervention. However, Haines declined to comment on China’s planned timeline for its move against Taiwan.
Internal factors such as flaws in China’s political system, slowing economic growth, and a shirking population may give China an added sense of urgency to strike a decisive blow against Taiwan within an accelerated timeframe.
In a 2022 Taipei Times article, Jerome Keating notes that one-party authoritarian states such as China and Russia are vulnerable to power struggles as their leaders often lack graceful exit strategies as institutionalized in democratic states.
Moreover, he notes that as strongmen leaders get to the top, they make numerous enemies in the process, which gives them a sense of urgency to stay in power for their safety.
Keating mentions Xi had made many enemies during his rise to power and that there had at least been seven attempts on his life. However, he also notes that with no clear successor in sight, settling the Taiwan issue before 2027 would cement his legitimacy and extend his hold on power.
In that connection, China’s slowing economy may give it further incentive to act on Taiwan sooner rather than later. In a 2022 Axios article, Matt Philips notes that economic analysts doubt that China will regain its breakneck economic development as seen in the 1990s and 2000s, which lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty.
Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects a joint military exercise in the South China Sea in April 2018. Photo: Xinhua
With limited options to restart economic growth, Philips notes that Xi may have shifted his source of legitimacy from boosting economic growth to a broader sense of national prestige by retaking Taiwan and projecting China’s power on the world stage.
However, he also cautions that China’s escalation in the Taiwan Strait is not to provide a distraction from its present economic woes, as since 1949 China has always been very sensitive about Taiwan’s international status.
China’s slowing population growth may also weaken its military in the long run, adding another reason for resolving the Taiwan issue before the debilitating effects of demographic decline hit its military. A 2021 Taiwan News article reports that 18% of China’s population is over 60 years old, and there were only 8.5 live births per 1000 in 2020, a massive drop from 18 per 1000 in 1978.
In addition, high living costs and a hyper-competitive education system have forced many Chinese to put off having children, resulting in a significant population decline.
The same source notes that a shrinking manpower pool and Chinese youth’s preference to enter technology rather than military fields has motivated projects to bring aging veterans back to active duty.
In the last analysis, China’s push to accelerate its nuclear weapons program to deter a US intervention in a Taiwan scenario may be driven equally by military and internal factors.
https://asiatimes.com/2022/08/china-upgrades-nuke-test-site-with-an-eye-on-taiwan/
Gabriel Honrada
6-8 minutes
Satellite photos obtained by Nikkei last week show that China is rapidly expanding its nuclear test facilities in western Xinjiang, sparking fears of a renewed nuclear arms race with the US as tensions boil over Taiwan.
The Nikkei report states that a satellite hovering at 450 kilometers detected extensive construction at the Lop Nur test site, a dried salt lakebed in the arid and restive Xinjiang region that borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
The report said that China may be building a sixth tunnel for underground testing, evidenced by broken rocks piled nearby and extensive coverings erected on a nearby mountainside. The satellite photos also show power cables, possible storage facilities for high explosives and unpaved roads from command centers.
An unnamed expert from US private geospatial analysis company AllSource Analysis told Nikkei that these developments enable China to conduct nuclear-related tests anytime. The power lines and road system now connect Lop Nur’s western military nuclear test facilities to new possible test areas in the east.
Nikkei suggested that evidence of a sixth test tunnel points to China’s planned resumption of nuclear tests, the last of which was conducted in 1996.
Nobumasa Akiyama, a professor of East Asian security at Hitotsubashi University, told Nikkei that China’s accelerated development of the Lop Nur test site means it intends to deter US intervention in an invasion of Taiwan by threatening the use of small nuclear weapons.
Nikkei also notes that maritime control will be the primary military issue in any invasion of Taiwan. Small nuclear weapons with limited strike capabilities would be sufficient for China to ward off US aircraft carriers. This strategy mirrors that of Russia in Ukraine, with its threat of nuclear escalation used as strategic cover to pursue conventional military operations.
While still trailing the US in nuclear weapons strength, experts say China is increasing its capability across the board. Credit: Handout.
The development may be part of China’s more extensive efforts to modernize its nuclear arsenal for a Taiwan scenario. Asia Times has previously reported on other stories regarding China’s nuclear arsenal, including its building of land-based nuclear silos, rail-based nukes, ballistic missile submarines and nuclear-armed stealth bombers at a rapid-fire pace.
Taiwanese and US officials have opined that China may invade Taiwan sooner than anticipated, suggesting dates as soon as 2025, 2027 and 2030.
“By 2025, China will bring the cost and attrition to its lowest. It has the capacity now, but it will not start a war easily, having to take many other things into consideration,” said Taiwan’s Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng in a 2021 article in The Guardian.
General Mark Milley, US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted in a 2021 US Naval Institute (USNI) article that China wants to acquire the military capabilities to invade and hold Taiwan by 2027. His assessment was based in part by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech calling for an acceleration of China’s military modernization and capabilities to seize Taiwan.
Moreover, US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines mentioned in a 2022 CNN article that Taiwan faces an acute China threat between the present and 2030, noting that China is working hard to put itself in a military position to take Taiwan over a US military intervention. However, Haines declined to comment on China’s planned timeline for its move against Taiwan.
Internal factors such as flaws in China’s political system, slowing economic growth, and a shirking population may give China an added sense of urgency to strike a decisive blow against Taiwan within an accelerated timeframe.
In a 2022 Taipei Times article, Jerome Keating notes that one-party authoritarian states such as China and Russia are vulnerable to power struggles as their leaders often lack graceful exit strategies as institutionalized in democratic states.
Moreover, he notes that as strongmen leaders get to the top, they make numerous enemies in the process, which gives them a sense of urgency to stay in power for their safety.
Keating mentions Xi had made many enemies during his rise to power and that there had at least been seven attempts on his life. However, he also notes that with no clear successor in sight, settling the Taiwan issue before 2027 would cement his legitimacy and extend his hold on power.
In that connection, China’s slowing economy may give it further incentive to act on Taiwan sooner rather than later. In a 2022 Axios article, Matt Philips notes that economic analysts doubt that China will regain its breakneck economic development as seen in the 1990s and 2000s, which lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty.
Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects a joint military exercise in the South China Sea in April 2018. Photo: Xinhua
With limited options to restart economic growth, Philips notes that Xi may have shifted his source of legitimacy from boosting economic growth to a broader sense of national prestige by retaking Taiwan and projecting China’s power on the world stage.
However, he also cautions that China’s escalation in the Taiwan Strait is not to provide a distraction from its present economic woes, as since 1949 China has always been very sensitive about Taiwan’s international status.
China’s slowing population growth may also weaken its military in the long run, adding another reason for resolving the Taiwan issue before the debilitating effects of demographic decline hit its military. A 2021 Taiwan News article reports that 18% of China’s population is over 60 years old, and there were only 8.5 live births per 1000 in 2020, a massive drop from 18 per 1000 in 1978.
In addition, high living costs and a hyper-competitive education system have forced many Chinese to put off having children, resulting in a significant population decline.
The same source notes that a shrinking manpower pool and Chinese youth’s preference to enter technology rather than military fields has motivated projects to bring aging veterans back to active duty.
In the last analysis, China’s push to accelerate its nuclear weapons program to deter a US intervention in a Taiwan scenario may be driven equally by military and internal factors.
https://asiatimes.com/2022/08/china-upgrades-nuke-test-site-with-an-eye-on-taiwan/
jward
passin' thru
Julian Ku 古舉倫
@julianku
5h
“Probably the biggest [takeaway] is, under most assumptions, the United States and Taiwan can conduct a successful defense of the island. That’s different from many people’s impressions"...
www.wsj.com
@julianku
5h
“Probably the biggest [takeaway] is, under most assumptions, the United States and Taiwan can conduct a successful defense of the island. That’s different from many people’s impressions"...
War Game Finds U.S., Taiwan Can Defend Against a Chinese Invasion
A complex daylong war game, played out recently at a Washington think tank, demonstrated how destructive any attempted Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be across the Indo-Pacific.
www.wsj.com
northern watch
TB Fanatic
How U.S. HIMARS Compare to China's Missile Systems
Giulia Carbonaro - 16h ago
August 9 2022
Newsweek
During the unprecedented show of force that China has put on around Taiwan in retaliation for United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to the self-governing island, Beijing has tested a new weapon in their arsenal: a long-range Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) which has been compared to the U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).
© FADEL SENNA/AFP via Getty Images China's new MLRS, reportedly tested in the Taiwan Strait, has been compared to the U.S. HIMARS. In this photo, a U.S. soldier inspects an M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launcher vehicle, during the "African Lion" military exercise in the Grier Labouihi region in southeastern Morocco on June 9, 2021.
The new MLRS was first revealed to the public during China's National Day parade in October 2019. Beijing reportedly tested the new weapon for the first time in mid-July, according to China's state-owned broadcaster CCTV, which said the MLRS fired rockets in a high-altitude zone.
The weapon was reportedly used again during the military drills around Taiwan these past few days.
Pictures from China's CCTV were posted last week on Twitter by Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia Engagement at the Defense Priorities think tank, who said the images showed the MLRS firing rockets into the Taiwan Strait on August 4. Goldstein called the weapons "a game changer."
A correspondent for the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based English language newspaper, replied to Goldstein's tweet calling the MLRS the "Chinese version" of HIMARS.
But how does China's MLRS compare to the U.S. HIMARS?
MLRS v. HIMARS
Military experts at Military Watch Magazine argue that China's new MLRS is "among the heaviest in the world with a range rivaled only by its North Korean counterpart the KN-25."
Capable of firing both rockets and ballistic missiles, the new hardware—named the Type PCL-191, part of China's Weishi series—has a platform that can carry up to eight 370 mm rockets capable of reaching 217 miles, a significant extension of Beijing's previous firing range and, according to experts, an improvement of its precision strike capabilities.
It can also be used as a launcher for two 750 mm "Fire Dragon 480" tactical ballistic missiles with 310-mile ranges. The U.S. HIMARS, on the other hand, can carry six GPS-guided missiles, which can be fired at targets over 185 miles away.
"The Chinese Weishi could be roughly compared to M142 HIMARS," Dr. Marina Miron, researcher at King's College London Defence Studies, told Newsweek.
"However, the Chinese Weishi family appears to be quite versatile," she added. "For example, the WS-2C and the 2D have a range of 220 miles and 250 miles respectively; the latter can launch UAVs, too."
"The UAVs have an anti-radar function, which is useful for countering adversary's air defenses. The rockets can have a variety of different warheads ranging from anti-personnel to armor-piercing dual purpose—as it seems China does not face the same legal constraints as the U.S.," Marion said.
Despite the apparent similarities, the defense expert thinks we need to be careful about comparing the two systems.
"The Chinese system that has been mentioned in the news is allegedly the WS-2D MLRS, which is argued to be the most advanced," she said.
"Certainly, in terms of its range it would exceed that of M142. Of course, one has to look at factors such as supply and maintenance as well... how much WS-2D requires vs. HIMARS; how fast it can reload without being detected (that is where HIMARS is probably superior) and, most importantly, where and to what end it is to be deployed. For China's purpose, WS-2D with its 400km range is much more useful than a HIMARS system would be."
Compared to MLRS launchers, HIMARS have a key, well-known difference, as Mirion mentioned: missiles can be reloaded in about a minute with a small team consisting of only a driver, gunner and launcher section chief, allowing troops to quickly relocate after firing.
But another important difference between the U.S. HIMARS and China's MLRS is that, while we know for sure what the capabilities and power of the American-produced weapons are, we do not yet know how reliable and accurate the Chinese system actually is.
We also do not know how many of these MLRS Beijing can already count in its arsenal, while we know that the U.S. has several hundred HIMARS.
U.S.-supplied HIMARS are currently being employed during the war in Ukraine to help Kyiv's troops repel Moscow's military in the Donbas region.
Both systems (especially HIMARS and some Weishi variants) are similar to Russia's BM-30 Smerch, with a firing range of up to 56 miles, said Mirion.
Update, 9/09/2022 11:00 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to add an expert's comment to the story.
How U.S. HIMARS Compare to China's Missile Systems (msn.com)
Giulia Carbonaro - 16h ago
August 9 2022
Newsweek
During the unprecedented show of force that China has put on around Taiwan in retaliation for United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to the self-governing island, Beijing has tested a new weapon in their arsenal: a long-range Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) which has been compared to the U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).
© FADEL SENNA/AFP via Getty Images China's new MLRS, reportedly tested in the Taiwan Strait, has been compared to the U.S. HIMARS. In this photo, a U.S. soldier inspects an M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launcher vehicle, during the "African Lion" military exercise in the Grier Labouihi region in southeastern Morocco on June 9, 2021.
The new MLRS was first revealed to the public during China's National Day parade in October 2019. Beijing reportedly tested the new weapon for the first time in mid-July, according to China's state-owned broadcaster CCTV, which said the MLRS fired rockets in a high-altitude zone.
The weapon was reportedly used again during the military drills around Taiwan these past few days.
Pictures from China's CCTV were posted last week on Twitter by Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia Engagement at the Defense Priorities think tank, who said the images showed the MLRS firing rockets into the Taiwan Strait on August 4. Goldstein called the weapons "a game changer."
A correspondent for the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based English language newspaper, replied to Goldstein's tweet calling the MLRS the "Chinese version" of HIMARS.
But how does China's MLRS compare to the U.S. HIMARS?
MLRS v. HIMARS
Military experts at Military Watch Magazine argue that China's new MLRS is "among the heaviest in the world with a range rivaled only by its North Korean counterpart the KN-25."
Capable of firing both rockets and ballistic missiles, the new hardware—named the Type PCL-191, part of China's Weishi series—has a platform that can carry up to eight 370 mm rockets capable of reaching 217 miles, a significant extension of Beijing's previous firing range and, according to experts, an improvement of its precision strike capabilities.
It can also be used as a launcher for two 750 mm "Fire Dragon 480" tactical ballistic missiles with 310-mile ranges. The U.S. HIMARS, on the other hand, can carry six GPS-guided missiles, which can be fired at targets over 185 miles away.
"The Chinese Weishi could be roughly compared to M142 HIMARS," Dr. Marina Miron, researcher at King's College London Defence Studies, told Newsweek.
"However, the Chinese Weishi family appears to be quite versatile," she added. "For example, the WS-2C and the 2D have a range of 220 miles and 250 miles respectively; the latter can launch UAVs, too."
"The UAVs have an anti-radar function, which is useful for countering adversary's air defenses. The rockets can have a variety of different warheads ranging from anti-personnel to armor-piercing dual purpose—as it seems China does not face the same legal constraints as the U.S.," Marion said.
Despite the apparent similarities, the defense expert thinks we need to be careful about comparing the two systems.
"The Chinese system that has been mentioned in the news is allegedly the WS-2D MLRS, which is argued to be the most advanced," she said.
"Certainly, in terms of its range it would exceed that of M142. Of course, one has to look at factors such as supply and maintenance as well... how much WS-2D requires vs. HIMARS; how fast it can reload without being detected (that is where HIMARS is probably superior) and, most importantly, where and to what end it is to be deployed. For China's purpose, WS-2D with its 400km range is much more useful than a HIMARS system would be."
Compared to MLRS launchers, HIMARS have a key, well-known difference, as Mirion mentioned: missiles can be reloaded in about a minute with a small team consisting of only a driver, gunner and launcher section chief, allowing troops to quickly relocate after firing.
But another important difference between the U.S. HIMARS and China's MLRS is that, while we know for sure what the capabilities and power of the American-produced weapons are, we do not yet know how reliable and accurate the Chinese system actually is.
We also do not know how many of these MLRS Beijing can already count in its arsenal, while we know that the U.S. has several hundred HIMARS.
U.S.-supplied HIMARS are currently being employed during the war in Ukraine to help Kyiv's troops repel Moscow's military in the Donbas region.
Both systems (especially HIMARS and some Weishi variants) are similar to Russia's BM-30 Smerch, with a firing range of up to 56 miles, said Mirion.
Update, 9/09/2022 11:00 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to add an expert's comment to the story.
How U.S. HIMARS Compare to China's Missile Systems (msn.com)
northern watch
TB Fanatic
So there are some simulations of a hypothetical war between the US and China over Taiwan where China wins.Julian Ku 古舉倫
@julianku
5h
“Probably the biggest [takeaway] is, under most assumptions, the United States and Taiwan can conduct a successful defense of the island. That’s different from many people’s impressions"...
War Game Finds U.S., Taiwan Can Defend Against a Chinese Invasion
A complex daylong war game, played out recently at a Washington think tank, demonstrated how destructive any attempted Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be across the Indo-Pacific.
I would like to know what the assumptions are whereby China wins? It does seem to me that the war game is classified, so we may never know.
"Winning" is very often a lot more expensive than the MSRP would have you suspect....
danielboon
TB Fanatic
China:we will use force if peaceful solution with Taiwan fails
View: https://mobile.twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1557265481609912320?cxt=HHwWgICxxY2twpwrAAAA
northern watch
TB Fanatic
Well, if China wants to play chess, just attack the US warships passing thru the Strait and see what Uncle Joes does?
colonel holman
Veteran Member
MSRP… now yer lookin to start a fight there
danielboon
TB Fanatic
They could lets hope not
One might remember the battle for Taiwan will be a Naval Battle - its an island. And it is 80 miles from China and 7,000 miles from the US.
The last Naval Battle was October 1944. There are no naval warfare experts alive that have experience in "real, no shit" Naval Warfare. And no one has experience with hypersonic missiles which absorb radar.
The last Major Aerial Battle was in 1982 and that was Israel. An aircraft carrier has about 48 fighters. The Chinese have 1,500 and are certain to deploy at least two fighters for every fighter we launch.
It will be Top Gun . . . without Tom Cruise.
The last Naval Battle was October 1944. There are no naval warfare experts alive that have experience in "real, no shit" Naval Warfare. And no one has experience with hypersonic missiles which absorb radar.
The last Major Aerial Battle was in 1982 and that was Israel. An aircraft carrier has about 48 fighters. The Chinese have 1,500 and are certain to deploy at least two fighters for every fighter we launch.
It will be Top Gun . . . without Tom Cruise.
northern watch
TB Fanatic
If Joe does nothing, then the invasion of Taiwan will begin!
jward
passin' thru
China withdraws promise not to dispatch troops to Taiwan after unification
Al Arabiya English
3 minutes
China has withdrawn a promise not to send troops or administrators to Taiwan if it takes control of the island, an official document showed on Wednesday, signaling a decision by President Xi Jinping to grant less autonomy than previously offered.
China’s white paper on its position on self-ruled Taiwan follows days of unprecedented Chinese military exercises near the island, which Beijing claims as its territory, in protest against US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit last week.
China had said in two previous white papers on Taiwan, in 1993 and 2000, that it “will not send troops or administrative personnel to be based in Taiwan” after achieving what Beijing terms “reunification.”
That line, meant to assure Taiwan it would enjoy autonomy after becoming a special administrative region of China, did not appear in the latest white paper.
China’s ruling Communist Party had proposed that Taiwan could return to its rule under a “one country, two systems” model, similar to the formula under which the former British
colony of Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
That would offer some autonomy to democratically ruled Taiwan to partially preserve its social and political systems.
All mainstream Taiwanese political parties have rejected the "one country, two systems" proposal. Taiwan's government says only the island's people can decide their future.
A line in the 2000 white paper that said “anything can be negotiated” as long as Taiwan accepts that there is only one China and does not seek independence, is also missing from the latest white paper.
Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council condemned the white paper, saying it was “full of lies of wishful thinking and disregarded the facts” and that the Republic of China – Taiwan’s official name - was a sovereign state.
“Only Taiwan’s 23 million people have the right to decide on the future of Taiwan, and they will never accept an outcome set by an autocratic regime.”
The updated white paper is called “The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era.” The “new era” is a term commonly associated with Xi’s rule. Xi is expected to secure a third term at a Communist Party congress later this year.
Taiwan has lived under the threat of Chinese invasion since 1949, when the defeated Republic of China government fled to the island after Mao Zedong's Communist Party won a civil war.
Read more:
Taiwan security officials want Foxconn to drop stake in Chinese chipmaker Tsinghua
english.alarabiya.net
Al Arabiya English
3 minutes
China has withdrawn a promise not to send troops or administrators to Taiwan if it takes control of the island, an official document showed on Wednesday, signaling a decision by President Xi Jinping to grant less autonomy than previously offered.
China’s white paper on its position on self-ruled Taiwan follows days of unprecedented Chinese military exercises near the island, which Beijing claims as its territory, in protest against US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit last week.
China had said in two previous white papers on Taiwan, in 1993 and 2000, that it “will not send troops or administrative personnel to be based in Taiwan” after achieving what Beijing terms “reunification.”
That line, meant to assure Taiwan it would enjoy autonomy after becoming a special administrative region of China, did not appear in the latest white paper.
China’s ruling Communist Party had proposed that Taiwan could return to its rule under a “one country, two systems” model, similar to the formula under which the former British
colony of Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
That would offer some autonomy to democratically ruled Taiwan to partially preserve its social and political systems.
All mainstream Taiwanese political parties have rejected the "one country, two systems" proposal. Taiwan's government says only the island's people can decide their future.
A line in the 2000 white paper that said “anything can be negotiated” as long as Taiwan accepts that there is only one China and does not seek independence, is also missing from the latest white paper.
Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council condemned the white paper, saying it was “full of lies of wishful thinking and disregarded the facts” and that the Republic of China – Taiwan’s official name - was a sovereign state.
“Only Taiwan’s 23 million people have the right to decide on the future of Taiwan, and they will never accept an outcome set by an autocratic regime.”
The updated white paper is called “The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era.” The “new era” is a term commonly associated with Xi’s rule. Xi is expected to secure a third term at a Communist Party congress later this year.
Taiwan has lived under the threat of Chinese invasion since 1949, when the defeated Republic of China government fled to the island after Mao Zedong's Communist Party won a civil war.
Read more:
Taiwan security officials want Foxconn to drop stake in Chinese chipmaker Tsinghua
China withdraws promise not to dispatch troops to Taiwan after unification
China has withdrawn a promise not to send troops or administrators to Taiwan if it takes control of the island, an official document showed on Wednesday,
northern watch
TB Fanatic
Seeker22
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Gravitas: China unveils game plan for Taiwan reunification
Aug 10, 2022
runtime 6:50
From another site: This is really a quick and interesting video about the fact that China released a white paper on Taiwan, and how they'll take by force if they have to, and how Taiwan is part of China.
This is very significant because it's the first white paper they've released in 22 years, and they've only done three ever, so this is not something they do every day.
Aug 10, 2022
runtime 6:50
From another site: This is really a quick and interesting video about the fact that China released a white paper on Taiwan, and how they'll take by force if they have to, and how Taiwan is part of China.
This is very significant because it's the first white paper they've released in 22 years, and they've only done three ever, so this is not something they do every day.
Last edited:
TheChrome
Contributing Member
There are those hypotheticals. I don't buy it. If I'm a General, I would project that I would lose every time in order to make my enemy more confident than they should be. It's a game. What is talked about is how China's navy has more ships than the US now. What is NOT talked about is that air superiority rules, and the US and NATO has double the fighter jets than Russia and China combined. This does not include allies such as Australia, Japan, India, and South Korea. It's total nonsense that China could establish air superiority in any action they take.
jward
passin' thru
Faytuks News Δ
@Faytuks
2h
Taiwan rejects the "one country, two systems" model proposed by Beijing in a white paper published this week, foreign ministry - Reuters
northern watch
TB Fanatic
jward
passin' thru
This thread/article may answer some, if not all, of your questions. The article is beyond a pay wall for me, and I don't have time to collate/post the thread, but you can click below and read more if you're interested:
Zack Cooper
@ZackCooper
Good piece by
@wstrobel
@WSJ
on wargaming about Taiwan scenarios. I was on Team China with
@becca_wasser
- we sunk 2 US aircraft carriers and destroyed 700 US/Japan aircraft. But we still only took 1/3rd of Taiwan before our amphibs were sunk and our invasion petered out.
Every game is different but this one served as a reminder that in some ways an invasion of Taiwan is easier for us to defeat than: - Blockade - Missile bombardment - Outlying island seizure Thanks to Eric Heginbotham and
@MarkCancian
for including me.
Zack Cooper
@ZackCooper
Good piece by
@wstrobel
@WSJ
on wargaming about Taiwan scenarios. I was on Team China with
@becca_wasser
- we sunk 2 US aircraft carriers and destroyed 700 US/Japan aircraft. But we still only took 1/3rd of Taiwan before our amphibs were sunk and our invasion petered out.
Every game is different but this one served as a reminder that in some ways an invasion of Taiwan is easier for us to defeat than: - Blockade - Missile bombardment - Outlying island seizure Thanks to Eric Heginbotham and
@MarkCancian
for including me.
northern watch
TB Fanatic
If you can sink 2 US aircraft carriers and destroy 700 US/Japan aircraft, take 1/3rd of Taiwan, then with more effort you will win.
Continue to rain missiles down on US airbases in Japan and Guam. Transport troops by ferry, fishing boats, anything that floats.
The longer the conflict drags on, the greater the probability that China will win. I do not think that the US will fight for 6 months or more like the Russian - Ukraine War.
The US is already fighting a covert war with Russia in the Ukraine.
China can take 100,000 killed, the US can not.
I also think that there will be no guerrilla war on Taiwan as those not killed will be sent to camps on mainland China.
Last edited:
jward
passin' thru
Taiwan’s reunification countdown has begun
Uwe Parpart and David P. Goldman
13-16 minutes
China’s People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command said in a statement on Monday (August 8) that joint drills in the sea and airspace around Taiwan were continuing.
The notice did not specify the precise location of the exercises or when they would end. Whether the six danger zones for the August 4-7 exercises remain in effect is unclear. The PLA never officially announced the end of the war games.
The announcement will likely leave US officialdom as clueless – or at any rate pretend-clueless – as was betrayed by their statements when Taiwanese officials said Chinese aircraft and warships had rehearsed an attack on the island on Saturday.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby complained that the Chinese “can go a long way to taking the tensions down simply by stopping these provocative military exercises and ending the rhetoric.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said China’s actions over Taiwan showed a move from prioritizing peaceful resolution toward the use of force.
By comparison, the statement by the Japanese Ministry of Defense that as many as four missiles flew over Taiwan’s capital, which is unprecedented, and that five of nine missiles fired toward its territory landed in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), had the advantage of being factual and accurate.
What neither the White House nor Foggy Bottom appears to have grasped to date is that in the wake of House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “reckless” visit to Taiwan (Tom Friedman’s terminology in his New York Times column) the Xi government took the irreversible decision to “cross the Rubicon” and systematically force the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland.
Too willfully provocative was Pelosi’s action and too puny were the White House and National Security Council’s efforts to rein her in. Together they persuaded Beijing that this Washington or the next administration under Biden’s successor would continue to vitiate and ultimately aim to discard the One China policy.
Live-fire exercises that began on August 5 were not a drill but the real thing, namely a blockade of the island that China can prolong at will.
Taiwanese soldiers take part in a drill simulating a Chinese military invasion in Tamshui, a coastal district of New Taipei City in northern Taiwan in a file photo. Photo: AFP / Patrick Lin
An amphibious invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is not Beijing’s preferred scenario. On the contrary: a naval blockade would shut down the island’s economy in a matter of weeks and force capitulation. Taiwan’s pro-Beijing China Times August 3 edition noted that the PLA exercise is the equivalent of a three-day blockade.
The Taiwanese economics ministry reports that the island has an 11-day supply of natural gas and 146 days’ worth of oil. A blockade softens up Taiwan while leaving open the option of an invasion; if the mainland were to invade, it would do more or less what the PLA is doing in the present exercises.
Except for timely and intensive intervention by the US National Security Council, China well might have applied force already.
Minnie Chang summed it up in the Alibaba-owned South China Morning Post:
Pelosi left behind a regional strategic situation that is changed fundamentally. On her way home, she met Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on August 4. Not unusual. But by contrast, Pelosi “was offered a reception in South Korea that might best be described as cool,” Andrew Salmon wrote in Asia Times.
“President Yoon Suk-yeol, who is on vacation this week (albeit, at his home in Seoul) did not meet with the senior US politician, though he did hold a 40-minute telephone conversation with her. Foreign Minister Park Jin also did not meet her: He is on a trip to ASEAN.” The South Koreans share a border with China and understand its concerns.
Why Pelosi crossed China’s red line
What has changed, and why has it changed? The answer lies in the details of diplomatic redlines.
US diplomatic relations with China began with the Shanghai Communique of 1972, which states:
Suppose that the president or vice-president of the United States was to visit Taiwan. A presidential visit would constitute de facto recognition of a sovereign Taiwan in contravention of the Shanghai Communique because heads of state do not visit heads of state of countries that they do not recognize or plan to recognize.
Diplomatic recognition, after all, was the purpose and the outcome of Nixon’s China visit.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (L) waving beside Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen on August 3, 2022. Photo: Handout
Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the Speaker of the House of Representatives is next in line to the vice-president for succession. Because of the Speaker’s Constitutional position, she is the third highest official in the United States. A presidential or vice-presidential visit to Taiwan would cross China’s red line. A visit by the Speaker nudges the red line.
That is precisely how Beijing understands the issue.
Xie Maosong of Tsinghua University’s National Institute of Strategic Studies wrote in the “Observer” (guancha.cn) website on August 5:
Maosong explains:
If Pelosi were forced to land elsewhere than Taipei, it might have been in a remote location without access to refueling, and her plane might run short of fuel after the five-hour flight from Malaysia. The trail plane was there to transport Pelosi and her party to her next stop in Seoul if necessary.
Members of Biden’s National Security Council were in continuous telephone contact with their counterparts in China. Their message to the Chinese was that the Biden administration did not want Pelosi to turn up in Taiwan. As Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times August 2 column: “Biden’s national security team made clear to Pelosi, a longtime advocate for human rights in China, why she should not go to Taiwan now.”
Nonetheless, Friedman added, “the president did not call her directly and ask her not to go, apparently worried he would look soft on China, leaving an opening for Republicans to attack him before the midterms. It is a measure of our political dysfunction that a Democratic president cannot deter a Democratic House speaker from engaging in a diplomatic maneuver that his entire national security team — from the CIA director to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs — deemed unwise.”
Next steps
What will happen now that the implications of the Xi government’s “Rubicon moment” are unfolding?
Contrary to some fantasists inside the Beltway, Beijing is in no great hurry. Elbridge Colby, a minor Defense Department official under the Trump administration, is an often-cited advocate for the notion that invasion is imminent.
He tweeted on July 13 that Beijing is “not going to hoodwink the Taiwanese people into giving up through ‘political warfare’ or what not. Taiwan can see what happened to Hong Kong. And the younger generation is more anti-mainland than the older one: Taiwan is moving away from unification. So military force is likely the best option for Beijing. And, as Ukraine shows, if you’re going to use military force, use it decisively.”
This is entirely wrongheaded. China need not overextend geographically, demographically, militarily or financially in order to effect unification. The natural course of economic development in East Asia itself (and globally) is its most powerful weapon. Time is on China’s side. Military force is the ultima, not the prima ratio. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme strategy.
Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects a joint military exercise in the South China Sea in April 2018. Photo: Xinhua
After Xi’s harsh words in his video call with Biden, expectations of nationalist commentators and stirred up netizens in China ran high for a swift military reaction. It did not happen. Instead, Phase One of a longer-term and flexible strategy was enacted, a strategy of military exercises which amount to blockades, a tighter military noose increasing the threat level.
This already has many foreign companies rethinking their Taiwan commitments. This will be followed by some relaxation, a pause for reflection and offers of talks. Squeeze and relax, with the message that at any time a large military exercise could be the real thing. In fact, the effective blockade is the real thing.
Washington may not see it yet or may prefer not to call it by name. But the takeover is underway. It’s out in the clear light of day.
asiatimes.com
Uwe Parpart and David P. Goldman
13-16 minutes
China’s People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command said in a statement on Monday (August 8) that joint drills in the sea and airspace around Taiwan were continuing.
The notice did not specify the precise location of the exercises or when they would end. Whether the six danger zones for the August 4-7 exercises remain in effect is unclear. The PLA never officially announced the end of the war games.
The announcement will likely leave US officialdom as clueless – or at any rate pretend-clueless – as was betrayed by their statements when Taiwanese officials said Chinese aircraft and warships had rehearsed an attack on the island on Saturday.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby complained that the Chinese “can go a long way to taking the tensions down simply by stopping these provocative military exercises and ending the rhetoric.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said China’s actions over Taiwan showed a move from prioritizing peaceful resolution toward the use of force.
By comparison, the statement by the Japanese Ministry of Defense that as many as four missiles flew over Taiwan’s capital, which is unprecedented, and that five of nine missiles fired toward its territory landed in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), had the advantage of being factual and accurate.
What neither the White House nor Foggy Bottom appears to have grasped to date is that in the wake of House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “reckless” visit to Taiwan (Tom Friedman’s terminology in his New York Times column) the Xi government took the irreversible decision to “cross the Rubicon” and systematically force the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland.
Too willfully provocative was Pelosi’s action and too puny were the White House and National Security Council’s efforts to rein her in. Together they persuaded Beijing that this Washington or the next administration under Biden’s successor would continue to vitiate and ultimately aim to discard the One China policy.
Live-fire exercises that began on August 5 were not a drill but the real thing, namely a blockade of the island that China can prolong at will.
Taiwanese soldiers take part in a drill simulating a Chinese military invasion in Tamshui, a coastal district of New Taipei City in northern Taiwan in a file photo. Photo: AFP / Patrick Lin
An amphibious invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is not Beijing’s preferred scenario. On the contrary: a naval blockade would shut down the island’s economy in a matter of weeks and force capitulation. Taiwan’s pro-Beijing China Times August 3 edition noted that the PLA exercise is the equivalent of a three-day blockade.
The Taiwanese economics ministry reports that the island has an 11-day supply of natural gas and 146 days’ worth of oil. A blockade softens up Taiwan while leaving open the option of an invasion; if the mainland were to invade, it would do more or less what the PLA is doing in the present exercises.
Except for timely and intensive intervention by the US National Security Council, China well might have applied force already.
Minnie Chang summed it up in the Alibaba-owned South China Morning Post:
Pelosi left behind a regional strategic situation that is changed fundamentally. On her way home, she met Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on August 4. Not unusual. But by contrast, Pelosi “was offered a reception in South Korea that might best be described as cool,” Andrew Salmon wrote in Asia Times.
“President Yoon Suk-yeol, who is on vacation this week (albeit, at his home in Seoul) did not meet with the senior US politician, though he did hold a 40-minute telephone conversation with her. Foreign Minister Park Jin also did not meet her: He is on a trip to ASEAN.” The South Koreans share a border with China and understand its concerns.
Why Pelosi crossed China’s red line
What has changed, and why has it changed? The answer lies in the details of diplomatic redlines.
US diplomatic relations with China began with the Shanghai Communique of 1972, which states:
In an off-the-record discussion with Asia Times, one of the original members of the Richard Nixon delegation to China in 1972 stated that the Pelosi visit “clearly violates the spirit of the Shanghai Communique.” That stems from the Constitutional status of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Suppose that the president or vice-president of the United States was to visit Taiwan. A presidential visit would constitute de facto recognition of a sovereign Taiwan in contravention of the Shanghai Communique because heads of state do not visit heads of state of countries that they do not recognize or plan to recognize.
Diplomatic recognition, after all, was the purpose and the outcome of Nixon’s China visit.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (L) waving beside Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen on August 3, 2022. Photo: Handout
Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the Speaker of the House of Representatives is next in line to the vice-president for succession. Because of the Speaker’s Constitutional position, she is the third highest official in the United States. A presidential or vice-presidential visit to Taiwan would cross China’s red line. A visit by the Speaker nudges the red line.
That is precisely how Beijing understands the issue.
Xie Maosong of Tsinghua University’s National Institute of Strategic Studies wrote in the “Observer” (guancha.cn) website on August 5:
Article 8 of the Anti-Secession Law to which Xie Maosong refers states:
Official Chinese media have made numerous references to the Anti-Secession Law during the past week, including a statement from the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress reported by China Daily on August 2.
Maosong explains:
Some of China’s leaders proposed to prevent Pelosi’s plane from reaching Taiwan, according to sources familiar with discussions in Beijing. The US military evidently considered that a serious possibility. As Pelosi’s aircraft turned north over the Philippines on its trip from Kuala Lumpur to Taipei, a second aircraft took off from Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines and trailed the Speaker’s plane.
If Pelosi were forced to land elsewhere than Taipei, it might have been in a remote location without access to refueling, and her plane might run short of fuel after the five-hour flight from Malaysia. The trail plane was there to transport Pelosi and her party to her next stop in Seoul if necessary.
Members of Biden’s National Security Council were in continuous telephone contact with their counterparts in China. Their message to the Chinese was that the Biden administration did not want Pelosi to turn up in Taiwan. As Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times August 2 column: “Biden’s national security team made clear to Pelosi, a longtime advocate for human rights in China, why she should not go to Taiwan now.”
Nonetheless, Friedman added, “the president did not call her directly and ask her not to go, apparently worried he would look soft on China, leaving an opening for Republicans to attack him before the midterms. It is a measure of our political dysfunction that a Democratic president cannot deter a Democratic House speaker from engaging in a diplomatic maneuver that his entire national security team — from the CIA director to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs — deemed unwise.”
Next steps
What will happen now that the implications of the Xi government’s “Rubicon moment” are unfolding?
Contrary to some fantasists inside the Beltway, Beijing is in no great hurry. Elbridge Colby, a minor Defense Department official under the Trump administration, is an often-cited advocate for the notion that invasion is imminent.
He tweeted on July 13 that Beijing is “not going to hoodwink the Taiwanese people into giving up through ‘political warfare’ or what not. Taiwan can see what happened to Hong Kong. And the younger generation is more anti-mainland than the older one: Taiwan is moving away from unification. So military force is likely the best option for Beijing. And, as Ukraine shows, if you’re going to use military force, use it decisively.”
This is entirely wrongheaded. China need not overextend geographically, demographically, militarily or financially in order to effect unification. The natural course of economic development in East Asia itself (and globally) is its most powerful weapon. Time is on China’s side. Military force is the ultima, not the prima ratio. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme strategy.
Chinese President Xi Jinping inspects a joint military exercise in the South China Sea in April 2018. Photo: Xinhua
After Xi’s harsh words in his video call with Biden, expectations of nationalist commentators and stirred up netizens in China ran high for a swift military reaction. It did not happen. Instead, Phase One of a longer-term and flexible strategy was enacted, a strategy of military exercises which amount to blockades, a tighter military noose increasing the threat level.
This already has many foreign companies rethinking their Taiwan commitments. This will be followed by some relaxation, a pause for reflection and offers of talks. Squeeze and relax, with the message that at any time a large military exercise could be the real thing. In fact, the effective blockade is the real thing.
Washington may not see it yet or may prefer not to call it by name. But the takeover is underway. It’s out in the clear light of day.
Taiwan’s reunification countdown has begun - Asia Times
China’s People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command said in a statement on Monday (August 8) that joint drills in the sea and airspace around
asiatimes.com
northern watch
TB Fanatic
Taiwan attacks coming: Five major Chinese groups withdraw from the New York Stock Exchange
In fear of sanctions...
12/08/2022 - 18:22
War News 24 / 7
Five major Chinese companies listed in the United States announced on Friday that they are withdrawing from the New York Stock Exchange, at a time when Beijing companies are being targeted by US regulators.
Mainland China and Hong Kong companies do not submit their financial statements to auditors certified by the US authorities.
A law passed in 2020 by the US Congress obliges any company listed in the United States to proceed with the validation of its accounts by an office certified by the independent accounting organization PCAOB.
In case of non-compliance with the legislation, businesses risk being deregistered from 2024.
In this context, the major oil companies Sinopec and PetroChina said today in separate announcements that they are "voluntarily withdrawing" from the New York Stock Exchange, on which they are listed.
The large insurance company China Life Insurance, the Chinese aluminum giant Chalco, as well as a shanghai-based subsidiary of Sinopec have announced similar demarches.
They all justify this decision by citing the costs required to continue to be listed in the United States, as well as the burden represented by respect for obligations regarding controls.
The five groups are on a list of companies that have been warned to comply with accounting obligations set by the US Securities and Exchange Authority (SEC) and were therefore threatened with expulsion from the US Stock Exchange.
Taiwan attacks coming: Five major Chinese groups withdraw from the New York Stock Exchange - WarNews247
In fear of sanctions...
12/08/2022 - 18:22
War News 24 / 7
Five major Chinese companies listed in the United States announced on Friday that they are withdrawing from the New York Stock Exchange, at a time when Beijing companies are being targeted by US regulators.
Mainland China and Hong Kong companies do not submit their financial statements to auditors certified by the US authorities.
A law passed in 2020 by the US Congress obliges any company listed in the United States to proceed with the validation of its accounts by an office certified by the independent accounting organization PCAOB.
In case of non-compliance with the legislation, businesses risk being deregistered from 2024.
In this context, the major oil companies Sinopec and PetroChina said today in separate announcements that they are "voluntarily withdrawing" from the New York Stock Exchange, on which they are listed.
The large insurance company China Life Insurance, the Chinese aluminum giant Chalco, as well as a shanghai-based subsidiary of Sinopec have announced similar demarches.
They all justify this decision by citing the costs required to continue to be listed in the United States, as well as the burden represented by respect for obligations regarding controls.
The five groups are on a list of companies that have been warned to comply with accounting obligations set by the US Securities and Exchange Authority (SEC) and were therefore threatened with expulsion from the US Stock Exchange.
Taiwan attacks coming: Five major Chinese groups withdraw from the New York Stock Exchange - WarNews247
northern watch
TB Fanatic
Five U.S.-Listed Chinese Companies Seek to Delist From NYSE
Friday, August 12, 2022, 6:11 AM ET
By Clarence Leong
Wall Street Journal
Five U.S.-listed Chinese companies said Friday that they intend to delist their American depositary shares from the New York Stock Exchange, as U.S. and Chinese regulators remain at loggerheads over audit requirements.
In separate filings to the Hong Kong stock exchange, China Life Insurance Co. Ltd. (China), PetroChina Co., China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd. and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co. said they would apply for the voluntary delisting of their ADSs from the NYSE.
PetroChina cited the "considerable administrative burden for performing the disclosure obligations" necessary for maintaining its U.S. listing, while many companies noted the limited trading volume of their ADSs.
PetroChina said that as of Aug. 9, its outstanding ADSs represented about 3.93% of its total Hong Kong-listed shares and 0.45% of the total share capital of the company.
All five companies said they plan to file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to delist their securities within this month. The delisting of their ADSs from the NYSE is expected to become effective 10 days thereafter, they said.
More than 250 Chinese companies face mass delistings from the U.S. if the two countries can't reach a deal for U.S. regulators to inspect the audit papers of Chinese companies.
Write to Clarence Leong at clarence.leong@wsj.com
Five U.S.-Listed Chinese Companies Seek to Delist From NYSE - MarketWatch
Friday, August 12, 2022, 6:11 AM ET
By Clarence Leong
Wall Street Journal
Five U.S.-listed Chinese companies said Friday that they intend to delist their American depositary shares from the New York Stock Exchange, as U.S. and Chinese regulators remain at loggerheads over audit requirements.
In separate filings to the Hong Kong stock exchange, China Life Insurance Co. Ltd. (China), PetroChina Co., China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd. and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co. said they would apply for the voluntary delisting of their ADSs from the NYSE.
PetroChina cited the "considerable administrative burden for performing the disclosure obligations" necessary for maintaining its U.S. listing, while many companies noted the limited trading volume of their ADSs.
PetroChina said that as of Aug. 9, its outstanding ADSs represented about 3.93% of its total Hong Kong-listed shares and 0.45% of the total share capital of the company.
All five companies said they plan to file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to delist their securities within this month. The delisting of their ADSs from the NYSE is expected to become effective 10 days thereafter, they said.
More than 250 Chinese companies face mass delistings from the U.S. if the two countries can't reach a deal for U.S. regulators to inspect the audit papers of Chinese companies.
Write to Clarence Leong at clarence.leong@wsj.com
Five U.S.-Listed Chinese Companies Seek to Delist From NYSE - MarketWatch
northern watch
TB Fanatic
northern watch
TB Fanatic
If and when this really kicks off, I fear we will soon discover how effective the Chicoms have been in compromising people in our leadership, institutions, media, and elsewhere.
If they have backdoors in our telecom (Huawei) and other computer infrastructure, a peer to peer conflict with China may not go well for team America.
Of all the global players, China is the one I trust the least and fear the most.
If they have backdoors in our telecom (Huawei) and other computer infrastructure, a peer to peer conflict with China may not go well for team America.
Of all the global players, China is the one I trust the least and fear the most.
danielboon
TB Fanatic
jward
passin' thru
U.S. Will Continue to Defend Taiwan From China's Threats: White House
Jake Thomas
4 minutes
The Biden administration is reiterating its support for Taiwan's self-defense in response to what it calls China's increasingly provocative actions against the self-governing island.
Kurt Campbell, a top White House aide for the Indo-Pacific, said during a press call Friday that the White House will seek deeper ties with Taiwan in the face of what he called China's potentially destabilizing nearby military activity. His remarks come as Beijing remains fuming over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent visit to Taiwan, which China views as part of its territory.
Chinese forces last month began a series of extensive military drills near the Taiwan Strait that began after Pelosi departed Taipei after meeting with Taiwanese officials with other U.S. lawmakers. The Taiwanese Defense Ministry reported a record number of Chinese aircraft and naval vessels in its surrounding sea and airspace with military jets flying more than 300 sorties around the island.
"China has overreacted, and its actions continue to be provocative, destabilizing and unprecedented," Campbell said Friday. "China launched missiles into the waters around Taiwan. It declared exclusion zones around Taiwan that disrupted civilian, air and maritime traffic."
The White House on Friday restated its commitment to Taiwan. Above, Taiwanese flags are seen as tourists walk past in Taiwan's Kinmen islands on August 11, 2022. Sam Yeh/Getty Images
Campbell said China disregarded the long-established centerline separating Taiwan from China. In response, he said President Joe Biden directed the USS Ronald Reagan to remain stationed in the Philippines Sea, east of Taiwan.
The U.S. has had a complicated relationship with Taiwan since President Richard Nixon re-established relations with Communist-led China. Since the rapprochement with Beijing, the U.S. has recognized "one China." At the same time, the U.S. has maintained unofficial relations with Taiwan, while not formally accepting China's claim to the island.
Campbell said the U.S. remains committed to its one China policy while continuing to fulfill its obligations set out in the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which he said includes supporting the island's self-defense.
"We oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side, and we do not support Taiwan independence, and we expect cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means," he said.
In the coming days, Campbell said the White House would roll out "an ambitious roadmap for trade negotiations" with Taiwan. Consistent with America's one China policy, the Biden administration "will "deepen our ties with Taiwan including through continuing to advance our economic and trade relationship."
Congress is currently considering the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022, which would increase defense assistance for the island. Chinese officials have excoriated the bill as infringing on its sovereignty.
The Chinese government this week released a major policy paper arguing strongly for Taiwan being brought under mainland control, hinting that force may be necessary to bring the island to heel.
www.newsweek.com
Jake Thomas
4 minutes
The Biden administration is reiterating its support for Taiwan's self-defense in response to what it calls China's increasingly provocative actions against the self-governing island.
Kurt Campbell, a top White House aide for the Indo-Pacific, said during a press call Friday that the White House will seek deeper ties with Taiwan in the face of what he called China's potentially destabilizing nearby military activity. His remarks come as Beijing remains fuming over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent visit to Taiwan, which China views as part of its territory.
Chinese forces last month began a series of extensive military drills near the Taiwan Strait that began after Pelosi departed Taipei after meeting with Taiwanese officials with other U.S. lawmakers. The Taiwanese Defense Ministry reported a record number of Chinese aircraft and naval vessels in its surrounding sea and airspace with military jets flying more than 300 sorties around the island.
"China has overreacted, and its actions continue to be provocative, destabilizing and unprecedented," Campbell said Friday. "China launched missiles into the waters around Taiwan. It declared exclusion zones around Taiwan that disrupted civilian, air and maritime traffic."
The White House on Friday restated its commitment to Taiwan. Above, Taiwanese flags are seen as tourists walk past in Taiwan's Kinmen islands on August 11, 2022. Sam Yeh/Getty Images
Campbell said China disregarded the long-established centerline separating Taiwan from China. In response, he said President Joe Biden directed the USS Ronald Reagan to remain stationed in the Philippines Sea, east of Taiwan.
The U.S. has had a complicated relationship with Taiwan since President Richard Nixon re-established relations with Communist-led China. Since the rapprochement with Beijing, the U.S. has recognized "one China." At the same time, the U.S. has maintained unofficial relations with Taiwan, while not formally accepting China's claim to the island.
Campbell said the U.S. remains committed to its one China policy while continuing to fulfill its obligations set out in the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which he said includes supporting the island's self-defense.
"We oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side, and we do not support Taiwan independence, and we expect cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means," he said.
In the coming days, Campbell said the White House would roll out "an ambitious roadmap for trade negotiations" with Taiwan. Consistent with America's one China policy, the Biden administration "will "deepen our ties with Taiwan including through continuing to advance our economic and trade relationship."
Congress is currently considering the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022, which would increase defense assistance for the island. Chinese officials have excoriated the bill as infringing on its sovereignty.
The Chinese government this week released a major policy paper arguing strongly for Taiwan being brought under mainland control, hinting that force may be necessary to bring the island to heel.
U.S. Will Continue to Defend Taiwan From China's Threats: White House
A top White House official for the Indo-Pacific said the U.S. will seek closer ties with Taiwan despite objections from China.
www.newsweek.com
jward
passin' thru
In think tank’s Taiwan war game, US beats China at high cost
Todd South
WASHINGTON – In a pessimistic, but realistic, 2026 war game scenario, a combined sabotage and information operation campaign helped Chinese military forces land on the shores of Taiwan. The United States, caught off guard due to another global crisis, must rapidly respond.
In this near future, the United States has some, but not all the weapons, units and ships it needs for this fight. But there is no magic bullet that’s going to solve this invasion in a matter of hours or even days.
Players in the air-conditioned offices of the Center for Strategic and International Studies huddled around conference room tables on Aug. 5. One room had the U.S. map of the Pacific region laid out, dotted with blocks of blue representing U.S. ships, airpower and units. Beside this map is another, dotted in red, showing the Chinese military view of the conflict.
In another room a detailed map of Taiwan sits, red forces already positioned and moving to take control.
This is the end of a week of war games in which various retired military officers, think tank experts and other government officials have participated. The result will be an extensive report later this year from CSIS analyzing the outcomes of 22 iterations of a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In all but one, the “Taiwan alone” version, the United States is heavily involved.
The game umpires include two doctoral students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a former Marine captain and Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist with MIT’s Center for International Studies and author of five books and numerous articles on China’s military power. Overseeing the project is Mark Cancian, a CSIS senior advisor and retired Marine colonel.
Some variants had Japan involved from the start. The Philippines allowed U.S. basing in some iterations, but not others. Game moderators permitted U.S. strikes on mainland China in some, but not others.
Throughout the week the game always reaches a stopping point where the players know the likely outcome and, nearly always within the roughly three-week timeframe of simulated combat, it reaches a stalemate on Taiwan between U.S. and Chinese ground forces.
The U.S. team on Aug. 5 included Chris Dougherty, a senior fellow for the Center for a New American Security’s Defense Program, and Daniel Rice, an analyst with The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Dougherty also served first in the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment and later as a senior advisor to the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development.
The China team consisted of Dr. Nora Bensahel, a Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies visiting professor, and Institute for Defense Analyses research staff member Thomas Greenwood, also a retired Marine colonel.
In the very real world, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had only concluded her controversial trip to Taiwan days before these war games began.
People’s Republic of China party officials denounced Pelosi’s trip, calling it a provocation. The Chinese government considers Taiwan a part of China and fights attempts by other nations to officially recognize the country’s independence.
“China will definitely take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity in response to” Pelosi’s visit, officials with the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The wide variety and sheer number of games gives analysts a robust data set, multiple players in the Aug. 5 iteration told Military Times. This is one way to go beyond the headlines and official quotes for a nitty gritty look at what it might take to counter China’s ambitions for Taiwan in the foreseeable future.
Marine Corps Pfc. Kevin Kent, a heavy equipment operator with Marine Wing Support Squadron 171, moves his fleet during a squadron war game competition at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, April 26, 2022. (Sgt. Phuchung Nguyen/Marine Corps)
Time, resources and strategy
In an age of data mining, advanced algorithms, machine learning and seemingly endless computer-run simulations, what value would an old-fashioned tabletop map, game pieces and a fistful of 20-sided dice hold?
“I think it helps you get a far better sense of what U.S. strengths and weaknesses are, and (what) an adversary’s strengths and weaknesses are, in a way that you can’t get from reading an order of battle or a news article,” Bensahel told Military Times.
Hearing from a variety of experts on aspects of air, land and maritime assets and challenges also gives players a deeper understanding.
“It helps shape your way of thinking and how you approach problems in a broader sense,” Bensahel said.
In this not-too-far-off scenario, four players are waging war in an operation that, should it unfold in the real world, would have catastrophic consequences. And the time of gameplay matters.
“If you want anything meaningful to happen on the ground, it happens in weeks or even months,” said Mark Cancian, former Marine officer, game co-designer and umpire. “The thing I like to tell people is look at (World War II) Okinawa took two months and three weeks and that island on the board is not that big. There’s a lot of loose talk on fait accompli. If the Taiwanese fight back, it would take months for China to take it on the ground.”
On the first U.S. turn, the players lost an entire aircraft carrier. In a version earlier in the week, the United States lost 700 aircraft over the three-week battle.
None of these provided a pretty outcome, but in each of the versions, the United States prevailed, Cancian said.
Leaders assigned to 2nd Cavalry Regiment conduct a multinational war gaming meeting involving leaders from the United Kingdom, Hungary and the Netherlands during a planning phase while participating in Allied Spirit I at Hohenfels Training Area located in Germany, Jan. 20, 2015. (Army)
A war game renaissance
Dougherty noted that war games once dominated the discussions but fell to a low point during the counterinsurgency decades of the early 2000s. That was until nearly a decade ago when former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work and former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul Selva authored a paper calling for a renaissance in wargaming in a 2015 article on the website, “War on the Rocks.”
The paper challenged think tanks and war colleges to reinstitute wargaming in their work, pointing to inter-war periods of the past where wargaming helped the U.S. and its allies prepare for large-scale conflicts such as World War II and the Cold War.
The Marine Corps has touted its use of wargaming, especially those using algorithm-based simulations, to run hundreds or even thousands of iterations of a scenario. That data, Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger has said, in part drove many of the major decisions the service has made in recent years to radically transform its force design.
The changes included shedding all the Corps’ tanks, re-configuring artillery units, and even altering the foundational structure of its infantry rifle squads.
But those decisions also drove controversy. More than a dozen retired Marine officers, many of them generals, publicly argued that the decisions were too radical. They wanted to see what these simulations laid out that led to such moves.
The defense press has asked the same question. Official Marine responses lean on the rigorous analysis the service’s leaders said they’ve performed, but stop short of revealing much, citing classification and secrecy concerns.
Cancian has lodged his own criticisms of the moves. And he told Military Times during the CSIS war game event that part of the value of the think tank exercise is that it can be public.
A heavy element in the Marine planning for a war with China is its Marine Littoral Regiment, a still forming unit that is experimenting with new weapons systems, formations and employment strategies.
“What are the assumptions? Where is the MLR?” Cancian said. That’s critical information for analysts, journalists and the public to understand better so that the Corps’ decisions make sense.
“And the Marine Corps says it’s all classified,” Cancian said.
Some of those assumptions are tested almost immediately in the Aug. 5 war game.
Luckily in this iteration, the Philippines and Japan have allowed the United States to base forces on their territory and use their airspace, though they’ve not entered the conflict.
It’s nice to have some land nearby to work from. But the distance is challenging.
The Marines’ key weapon, the Naval Strike Missile, simply can’t shoot far enough with its 100 nautical mile range.
Even if the Marines put all their fires on the Japanese held island of Yonaguni, the missiles lacked the reach to have impact.
“If I’m not on Taiwan, that weapon is basically useless,” Dougherty said.
And in every scenario, once the conflict stars there’s a “forest of Chinese ships” around Taiwan. In other games the Chinese military sunk an entire Amphibious Ready Group twice. And twice when the MLR did get onto Taiwan, it ran out of supplies and Chinese fires destroyed both its aerial and sea-based resupply.
Rice’s employer, The Mitchell Institute, uses war games to see what hard data might show gaps either in capabilities or assets.
A career-long China expert who now focuses on airpower for the institute, Rice told Military Times that bringing that kind of data to the discussion with a service or Congress can give weight to argument for various resources.
For example, in the midst the Aug. 5 war game, the U.S. aircraft carriers proved too vulnerable. Or a planner might hinge their whole operation on their landing force securing a beachhead.
“You might think you’re totally shored up on the Marines rolling this (operation), but we ran the war game and every single time no Marine made it to the beaches of Taiwan,” Rice said, as a hypothetical example.
War games are usually the realm of top military brass or specially invited experts with classified clearances. But strategy games, whether military-made educational tools or classics such as “Axis & Allies,” a four-decade old World War II board game, can benefit even low-level strategic thinking.
Playing these games helps military members work through small pieces of conflict and bigger picture views of how to integrate joint forces, doctrines and warfighting plans, Greenwood said.
“I think war games are essential, because it lets you, in a peacetime environment ... experiment and tinker with new ideas,” he said.
Lt. Cmdr. Fisher Reynolds and Brazilian Navy Lt. Cmdr. Savio Cavalcanti provide inputs to a multitouch, multiuser interface as part of a control group at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., during the 2013 Inter-American War Game. (Chief Mass Communication Specialist James E. Foehl/Navy)
The bitter end
The players and moderators ran their game for more than an hour, going through major moves, assumptions and outcomes.
“We took a giant face shot on our first turn when our carrier died,” Dougherty said.
“That always happens,” Mark Cancian said.
“One of the big lessons from these (war games) is that a deterrent is also a target,” Mark Cancian said.
While the China team had early successes, they lost far too much and took too many strikes on their ports and supply chain to continue the fight.
By the end of the game, the China team had more than 30 battalions on Taiwan, quite a feat in under three weeks of battle.
But the U.S. was able to cut off the Chinese resupply entirely, leaving thousands of simulated Chinese soldiers foraging for food, low on ammunition and trying to outmaneuver U.S. forces in a cat-and-mouse fight.
Dougherty noted how the time frame helped show real-world considerations. In many days-long simulations the United States takes many losses, and the end looks dire. But in a longer timeline, China takes more losses and once the U.S. gets its forces flowing into theater, the result is almost unchangeable — the U.S. wins, but at a heavy cost.
Players put that doomed aircraft carrier a little too close and lost it early. Other carriers hightailed it out of Chinese weapons ranges but were then ineffective in providing support.
In the end, Japan did enter the fight, losing a Surface Action Group and other equipment. The United States lost three Surface Action Groups, comprising typically of at least three to four ships.
But the Chinese military took far more hits — 51 amphibious ships, 58 major combatant ships, seven Surface Action Groups and many more air and fires assets.
The game ended before the complete conclusion of fighting, so it could get worse. The losses counted as historic by any modern measure but were limited in part due to long-range fires and precision targeting.
“It would be a very different fight when you have to get in close and the attrition goes up further,” Cancian said. “At some point, we’re going to be throwing rocks at each other.”
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/archetype/LF5RKZKEBRCBLHJBHSIE2WLL6A.jpg)
www.militarytimes.com
Todd South
WASHINGTON – In a pessimistic, but realistic, 2026 war game scenario, a combined sabotage and information operation campaign helped Chinese military forces land on the shores of Taiwan. The United States, caught off guard due to another global crisis, must rapidly respond.
In this near future, the United States has some, but not all the weapons, units and ships it needs for this fight. But there is no magic bullet that’s going to solve this invasion in a matter of hours or even days.
Players in the air-conditioned offices of the Center for Strategic and International Studies huddled around conference room tables on Aug. 5. One room had the U.S. map of the Pacific region laid out, dotted with blocks of blue representing U.S. ships, airpower and units. Beside this map is another, dotted in red, showing the Chinese military view of the conflict.
In another room a detailed map of Taiwan sits, red forces already positioned and moving to take control.
This is the end of a week of war games in which various retired military officers, think tank experts and other government officials have participated. The result will be an extensive report later this year from CSIS analyzing the outcomes of 22 iterations of a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In all but one, the “Taiwan alone” version, the United States is heavily involved.
The game umpires include two doctoral students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a former Marine captain and Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist with MIT’s Center for International Studies and author of five books and numerous articles on China’s military power. Overseeing the project is Mark Cancian, a CSIS senior advisor and retired Marine colonel.
Some variants had Japan involved from the start. The Philippines allowed U.S. basing in some iterations, but not others. Game moderators permitted U.S. strikes on mainland China in some, but not others.
Throughout the week the game always reaches a stopping point where the players know the likely outcome and, nearly always within the roughly three-week timeframe of simulated combat, it reaches a stalemate on Taiwan between U.S. and Chinese ground forces.
The U.S. team on Aug. 5 included Chris Dougherty, a senior fellow for the Center for a New American Security’s Defense Program, and Daniel Rice, an analyst with The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Dougherty also served first in the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment and later as a senior advisor to the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development.
The China team consisted of Dr. Nora Bensahel, a Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies visiting professor, and Institute for Defense Analyses research staff member Thomas Greenwood, also a retired Marine colonel.
In the very real world, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had only concluded her controversial trip to Taiwan days before these war games began.
People’s Republic of China party officials denounced Pelosi’s trip, calling it a provocation. The Chinese government considers Taiwan a part of China and fights attempts by other nations to officially recognize the country’s independence.
“China will definitely take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity in response to” Pelosi’s visit, officials with the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The wide variety and sheer number of games gives analysts a robust data set, multiple players in the Aug. 5 iteration told Military Times. This is one way to go beyond the headlines and official quotes for a nitty gritty look at what it might take to counter China’s ambitions for Taiwan in the foreseeable future.
Marine Corps Pfc. Kevin Kent, a heavy equipment operator with Marine Wing Support Squadron 171, moves his fleet during a squadron war game competition at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, April 26, 2022. (Sgt. Phuchung Nguyen/Marine Corps)
Time, resources and strategy
In an age of data mining, advanced algorithms, machine learning and seemingly endless computer-run simulations, what value would an old-fashioned tabletop map, game pieces and a fistful of 20-sided dice hold?
“I think it helps you get a far better sense of what U.S. strengths and weaknesses are, and (what) an adversary’s strengths and weaknesses are, in a way that you can’t get from reading an order of battle or a news article,” Bensahel told Military Times.
Hearing from a variety of experts on aspects of air, land and maritime assets and challenges also gives players a deeper understanding.
“It helps shape your way of thinking and how you approach problems in a broader sense,” Bensahel said.
In this not-too-far-off scenario, four players are waging war in an operation that, should it unfold in the real world, would have catastrophic consequences. And the time of gameplay matters.
“If you want anything meaningful to happen on the ground, it happens in weeks or even months,” said Mark Cancian, former Marine officer, game co-designer and umpire. “The thing I like to tell people is look at (World War II) Okinawa took two months and three weeks and that island on the board is not that big. There’s a lot of loose talk on fait accompli. If the Taiwanese fight back, it would take months for China to take it on the ground.”
On the first U.S. turn, the players lost an entire aircraft carrier. In a version earlier in the week, the United States lost 700 aircraft over the three-week battle.
None of these provided a pretty outcome, but in each of the versions, the United States prevailed, Cancian said.
Leaders assigned to 2nd Cavalry Regiment conduct a multinational war gaming meeting involving leaders from the United Kingdom, Hungary and the Netherlands during a planning phase while participating in Allied Spirit I at Hohenfels Training Area located in Germany, Jan. 20, 2015. (Army)
A war game renaissance
Dougherty noted that war games once dominated the discussions but fell to a low point during the counterinsurgency decades of the early 2000s. That was until nearly a decade ago when former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work and former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul Selva authored a paper calling for a renaissance in wargaming in a 2015 article on the website, “War on the Rocks.”
The paper challenged think tanks and war colleges to reinstitute wargaming in their work, pointing to inter-war periods of the past where wargaming helped the U.S. and its allies prepare for large-scale conflicts such as World War II and the Cold War.
The Marine Corps has touted its use of wargaming, especially those using algorithm-based simulations, to run hundreds or even thousands of iterations of a scenario. That data, Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger has said, in part drove many of the major decisions the service has made in recent years to radically transform its force design.
The changes included shedding all the Corps’ tanks, re-configuring artillery units, and even altering the foundational structure of its infantry rifle squads.
But those decisions also drove controversy. More than a dozen retired Marine officers, many of them generals, publicly argued that the decisions were too radical. They wanted to see what these simulations laid out that led to such moves.
The defense press has asked the same question. Official Marine responses lean on the rigorous analysis the service’s leaders said they’ve performed, but stop short of revealing much, citing classification and secrecy concerns.
Cancian has lodged his own criticisms of the moves. And he told Military Times during the CSIS war game event that part of the value of the think tank exercise is that it can be public.
A heavy element in the Marine planning for a war with China is its Marine Littoral Regiment, a still forming unit that is experimenting with new weapons systems, formations and employment strategies.
“What are the assumptions? Where is the MLR?” Cancian said. That’s critical information for analysts, journalists and the public to understand better so that the Corps’ decisions make sense.
“And the Marine Corps says it’s all classified,” Cancian said.
Some of those assumptions are tested almost immediately in the Aug. 5 war game.
Luckily in this iteration, the Philippines and Japan have allowed the United States to base forces on their territory and use their airspace, though they’ve not entered the conflict.
It’s nice to have some land nearby to work from. But the distance is challenging.
The Marines’ key weapon, the Naval Strike Missile, simply can’t shoot far enough with its 100 nautical mile range.
Even if the Marines put all their fires on the Japanese held island of Yonaguni, the missiles lacked the reach to have impact.
“If I’m not on Taiwan, that weapon is basically useless,” Dougherty said.
And in every scenario, once the conflict stars there’s a “forest of Chinese ships” around Taiwan. In other games the Chinese military sunk an entire Amphibious Ready Group twice. And twice when the MLR did get onto Taiwan, it ran out of supplies and Chinese fires destroyed both its aerial and sea-based resupply.
Rice’s employer, The Mitchell Institute, uses war games to see what hard data might show gaps either in capabilities or assets.
A career-long China expert who now focuses on airpower for the institute, Rice told Military Times that bringing that kind of data to the discussion with a service or Congress can give weight to argument for various resources.
For example, in the midst the Aug. 5 war game, the U.S. aircraft carriers proved too vulnerable. Or a planner might hinge their whole operation on their landing force securing a beachhead.
“You might think you’re totally shored up on the Marines rolling this (operation), but we ran the war game and every single time no Marine made it to the beaches of Taiwan,” Rice said, as a hypothetical example.
War games are usually the realm of top military brass or specially invited experts with classified clearances. But strategy games, whether military-made educational tools or classics such as “Axis & Allies,” a four-decade old World War II board game, can benefit even low-level strategic thinking.
Playing these games helps military members work through small pieces of conflict and bigger picture views of how to integrate joint forces, doctrines and warfighting plans, Greenwood said.
“I think war games are essential, because it lets you, in a peacetime environment ... experiment and tinker with new ideas,” he said.
Lt. Cmdr. Fisher Reynolds and Brazilian Navy Lt. Cmdr. Savio Cavalcanti provide inputs to a multitouch, multiuser interface as part of a control group at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., during the 2013 Inter-American War Game. (Chief Mass Communication Specialist James E. Foehl/Navy)
The bitter end
The players and moderators ran their game for more than an hour, going through major moves, assumptions and outcomes.
“We took a giant face shot on our first turn when our carrier died,” Dougherty said.
“That always happens,” Mark Cancian said.
“One of the big lessons from these (war games) is that a deterrent is also a target,” Mark Cancian said.
While the China team had early successes, they lost far too much and took too many strikes on their ports and supply chain to continue the fight.
By the end of the game, the China team had more than 30 battalions on Taiwan, quite a feat in under three weeks of battle.
But the U.S. was able to cut off the Chinese resupply entirely, leaving thousands of simulated Chinese soldiers foraging for food, low on ammunition and trying to outmaneuver U.S. forces in a cat-and-mouse fight.
Dougherty noted how the time frame helped show real-world considerations. In many days-long simulations the United States takes many losses, and the end looks dire. But in a longer timeline, China takes more losses and once the U.S. gets its forces flowing into theater, the result is almost unchangeable — the U.S. wins, but at a heavy cost.
Players put that doomed aircraft carrier a little too close and lost it early. Other carriers hightailed it out of Chinese weapons ranges but were then ineffective in providing support.
In the end, Japan did enter the fight, losing a Surface Action Group and other equipment. The United States lost three Surface Action Groups, comprising typically of at least three to four ships.
But the Chinese military took far more hits — 51 amphibious ships, 58 major combatant ships, seven Surface Action Groups and many more air and fires assets.
The game ended before the complete conclusion of fighting, so it could get worse. The losses counted as historic by any modern measure but were limited in part due to long-range fires and precision targeting.
“It would be a very different fight when you have to get in close and the attrition goes up further,” Cancian said. “At some point, we’re going to be throwing rocks at each other.”
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
In think tank’s Taiwan war game, US beats China at high cost
It's a pessimistic, but realistic, 2026 war game scenario.
www.militarytimes.com