No, what you're looking for is SAM launchers and fighters. Which means that a sparsely populated country makes it MUCH easier to find of these things out in the open. Whereas we have already seen recent photos of Taiwanese assets (shamefully) hiding in churches, schools, temples, etc. And for fighters you'll need to look up and down Taiwan's vast highway system to find them.
It means you have a larger space to search through. If they have any desert camou, it makes it much harder. I'd rather search for little things in a dinner plate than a bathtub any day. It also makes it very difficult to take out multiple things with big munitions if they are sparce. Continuous satellite and drone search is much easier on a small space. Fighters don't fly unless the highway is cleared. The clearing of a large stretch of highway is something that is easy to scan for. And to be honest, I don't think it would be hard at all with AI and satellite coverage to constantly look for and immediately flag any jet-shaped and sized objects that are exposed. Taiwan's small size and short distance to the mainland also means that China has continuous SAM coverage of all their airspace in case anything does get into the air.
And something that you haven't rebutted 2 times now is that the close proximity means that they are in range of the PLARF, which has much more firepower than the US can transport overseas.
You'll need to clarify what you mean by "reduced violence to their overall structure". The point of a landing barge is precisely that "any ship" will NOT actually do. If we're talking "any ship", nothing less than taking control of Taiwanese port cities will do, which again are heavily defended and massively increase the chance of invasion failure for the PLA/PLAN.
I'm talking about taking port cities in hours. Heavily defended how? What could they possibly throw out that would survive artillery strikes, then jet strikes, then constant armed-drone/helicopter coverage?
You don't have to chase anything down for a terminal phase-based SAM. It's already coming right at you.
1. I'm thinking the vast majority of an aircraft carrier's defense is in its strike group and only a small amount is there on the aircraft carrier itself. For those to be effective, they need to chase the missile while it's on route to the carrier.
2. Even the carrier itself needs to be quite precise in finding the timing and direction of in incoming missile to intercept it.
3. How many missiles can China afford to trade for each carrier and all the shit that's on it? Can they defend against that many missiles?
OK thanks. So they can practice too.
2. Except this "game" does not reflect any kind of real world scenario. If a HGV hits, it doesn't mean PLARF wins or the USN loses, and the reverse is not true either. In the real world, the PLARF has a limited complement of missiles.
Naw, man. In this game, if the HGV hits, the carrier loses and sinks. If the carrier wins, it gets to keep moving and the PLARF needs to fire again. Stakes are very very much different. I didn't mean win the whole war with one game.
3. There are multiple wargames out there, with the US or China winning or losing, such as this CSIS simulation:
Hegseth talks about the ones run by the Pentagon. I don't think anyone in the US has more information than the Pentagon so I value their wargames the highest amongst US sources.
I have no doubt they already have been building a stockpile of missiles, and would build far more during wartime. This DOESN'T actually answer the question of whether they will have enough missiles throughout the course of the conflict.
Is China, the building superpower more likely to stockpile enough missiles in its own home country, or is America, the country that constantly complains that it can't make anything anymore likely to ship enough missiles across the world?
What do you mean by "without regard to the preservation of the island"? If you really mean that, I can predict China could win this war in less than 1 hour. Taipei turns into a mushroom cloud, with 1 additional nuke per day on a random large city until Taiwan unconditionally surrenders. Done.
True, true, that would be the most savage ending and phyrric victory. So there is a spectrum between that and the CCP issuing the ROC an ultimatum and having them peacefully capitulate. The point is that China is moving its position in that spectrum farther from the former and closer to the latter but the fact that they didn't attack yet doesn't mean that they somehow don't believe that they can take Taiwan, as you seemed to surmise from their timing of building the barges. It's just a question of where they are on that spectrum.
