It will have to be a Naval and Air Blockade. US conducted massive air drops of 6,000 tons of supplies/day to Berlin in the beginning stages of the Cold War.
Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario
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In4ser
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Yes I meant both air and naval blockade so a no-fly zone over Taiwan. If China is ready to invade Taiwan, then it shouldn’t back down like the Soviets on attacking US aircraft.
Assuming they some how can drop 6,000 tonnes of food like rice is it enough for 23 million?
According to this , “well it really depends on the type of food and for how long we're talking about feeding those people. You mention humanitarian aid, which is often in the form of grain. One popular grain for these purposes is rice, which contains about 650 calories per cup, which weighs about 190 grams. speaking roughly, then, you need about 585 grams of rice to feed a person for a day (2000 calories). 1 ton = 2000 lb = ~910 kilograms. Divided by .585 kg of rice per person per day, we get that a ton of food feeds about 1550 people for a day, or 220 people for a week, or 50 people for a month.
Note: If you just ate rice for an extended period of time you would have some medical problems.”
1550 x 6000 = 9.3 million which is far below the population of Taiwan which is 23 million. They would be drop approximately 2.5x the amount of the Berlin airlift.
I guess it’s possible for the US to do but it is making a huge assumption that the US can air drop indefinitely that amount of food without interception and likely any supplies sent will also be partially ammo and fuel which will need to be subtracted from the total tonnage.
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And where exactly are those ships coming from? Even the think tanks are admitting that China is likely to wipe out the carrier group and air bases stationed in Asia in a surprise attack. The entire point of staging large scale war games instead of multi months build up is to normalize these operations and leave US/Japanese military as unprepared as possible. That's why US military is getting so alarmed about the entire situation. The working assumption is that China will throw everything at the 7th fleet and JSDF in that initial attack and wiping out everything inside 2nd island chain.
After this initial attack, US military will be looking to see which aircraft carriers can be surged in the next 30 days, bring them to west coast or Pearl and prepare for a long mission. US Navy is never going to be bringing just 1 or 2 carriers over. It will need to bring at least 3 and possibly 4 carriers over. According to patchwork, anything more than that, US Navy would not have replenishment ships needed to actually support this large fleet. And, it will take US military 2 months to be fully ready to bring over such a large strike group. If you are PLA, you will spend this time trying to make sure that this large flotilla does not get support from anywhere else. As in, you use your dominance of SCS to make sure that all the ASEAN nations fall in line and for Japan to never allow US military in those bases again. Fall in line means that these countries do not side with America for rest of the conflict and to allow Chinese missiles/aircraft flyover rights. The way to do that is aggressively utilize 056s and cutters to patrol SCS and ECS so that only countries that fall in line can continue trading with rest of the world. In certain cases like Myanmar and Cambodia, to be given the rights to basing your aircraft, ships and missiles there.
If PLA's lesson from Ukraine conflict is that China needs to be fully prepared for a full fledged war scenario, then it will need to build up enough of a force to:
1) take out all US/Japanese forces west of Pearl Harbor in that initial attack + keeping the bases non functional for the duration of the conflict
2) be able to fully blockade Taiwan and control trading/energy routes that all the East and Southeast Asian countries depend on
3) defeating the large strike force that US military will inevitably send over
To me, we will see an even more accelerated pace of purchase on the long range missiles, precision missiles, surface combatants, aircraft, helicopters and drones.
A blockade is not the same as war. The US blockaded Japan for nearly a year before war was declared, and that was only after Pearl Harbour.
Russia has shown it's possible to enforce a naval blockade without being in proximity of naval ports or the coastline. Just announce a no sail zone with a heavy naval presence surrounding Taiwan and no commercial ships will try to enter.
Russia has shown it's possible to enforce a naval blockade without being in proximity of naval ports or the coastline. Just announce a no sail zone with a heavy naval presence surrounding Taiwan and no commercial ships will try to enter.
You're already committed to a great war between the US and China, but I think it should be avoided if at all possible.
Yes, the carrier might be easily sunk, but that will be followed by years of war. Of course China needs to be ready for that possibility. But that shouldn't mean that a quick takeover of the island should be dismissed. It will cost more lives initially, but might save a lot more in the long term.
Or are you betting on the US government being smart enough not to intervene even though the forces it has in place in Japan are insufficient? That's quite optimistic. More likely political pressure in the US will be too strong to avoid sending some F-35s in the hope of stopping the PLA planes from bombing Taiwan. The US is immune to deterrence by China because they're too arrogant and believe that their technology is superior.
In4ser
Junior Member
The mere fact that the US has been repeatedly supplying Taiwan with military equipment and intends to continue to do it works against it during a blockade. This precedence and US strategic ambiguity is what China can use as justification for the interception or at least inspections of any “humanitarian aid” provided by the US during a blockade.
So, the current thought is that the American foreign policy establishment is 100% committed to a Great War. That's what all the war games are accounting for. I do agree that Chinese intelligence needs to figure out what is the likelihood of American participation and base its strategies around that. If in 3 years, America has come around to the idea that aiding Taiwan is not worth the loss, then China will use different strategies.
I don't see how an early landing will save lives. Fighting an entrenched and high morale defensive force (like what've seen in the Russia/Ukraine conflict) will simply leave heavy losses on both sides. It will also result in a lot of civilian casualties.
As I said before, even a scenario that don't involve attacking US/Japanese forces would start off with a major encirclement war game that suddenly turns into a full on blockade. War games are a great cover for some early blockade + pre-positioning all of your military assets. As we've seen recently, they only need a couple of days to pre-position the ETC forces. You never want to start attacking Taiwan before you destroy all of the fuel depots, power plants and communication towers. Even an early landing effort would require probably 2 weeks of persistent bombings of all military/infrastructure targets in Taiwan.
I recall as early as a few weeks ago, people were still boasting how the US will not intervene.
US will very likely leverage it's alliance system to militarily intervene in the event of AR. Japan will get involved. South Korea will get involved (esp. if South Korean soldiers are killed on US bases in Korea). Expect Taiwan to resist, expect asymmetrical warfare (its a waste for Taiwan to buy Abrams and F16s), urban warfare, tunnel warfare, etc... plan for the worst. It will be a nasty and costly war.
US will very likely leverage it's alliance system to militarily intervene in the event of AR. Japan will get involved. South Korea will get involved (esp. if South Korean soldiers are killed on US bases in Korea). Expect Taiwan to resist, expect asymmetrical warfare (its a waste for Taiwan to buy Abrams and F16s), urban warfare, tunnel warfare, etc... plan for the worst. It will be a nasty and costly war.
A weak president like Biden can easily be pushed by congress into war. Someone like Trump, hopefully back in the white house soon, is not 100% committed to war. He'd lose too much of his personal fortune. But even under Biden the US isn't 100% certain to choose war.
I agree, wargames that morph into a blockade is a great way to start the conflict. One great advantage of a blockade before the shooting begins is that amphibious landing vehicles can be safely released from ships that take part in the blockade. They'll only have to swim a few kilometres until they reach the beach, which will be much less well defended than it would be after bombs start falling. So it might be possible to quickly establish a beachhead in a nighttime surprise attack and then launch hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles to take out all well known fixed targets like fuel depots, runways etc using the Israeli strategy in the 6 day war. All the fixed targets like fuel depots won't survive the first wave of strikes. Why would it take 2 months to take out depots and power plants? Of course the political leadership should ideally be eliminated in the initial attack as well. If the ROC decides to fight, they'll throw everything they have at the PLA beachhead, making it even easier to eliminate them from the air, creating a new highway of death for ROC tanks moving towards the beachhead. Once the PLA has a beachhead and the ROC doesn't have a navy anymore, how are they supposed to stop additional ships from landing while being subjected to continuous bombardment at the same time?
If you bomb them for two months, they will be able to distribute small anti tank weapons around the entire island and they'll have light infantry waiting at every beach. They'll hide in bunkers, surviving the bombardment.
They are not going to use many ballistic/cruise missiles on Taiwan. They have PCL191, PGMs and stand off missiles that can do plenty of damage. There are several hundred targets in Taiwan that they will need to hit and that doesn't even include all the gas stations. That will require a couple of thousand rockets, guided missiles and ground attack missiles to degrade. Not something you can do in a couple of days. Taiwanese artilleries will be waiting for PLA the moment they try to land. I'm not really sure the rush to do this? China's great advantage right now is in its EW capabilities and its drones. Militarized drones can do a lot of damage over Taiwan once they establish complete air dominance. I'm not sure why you are so eager to land when defending force has high morale and committed to fighting vs when they are exhausted and deflated.
Anyhow, another post from Lyle Goldstein
China understands the need to attack/disable command centers, reconnaissance and early warning system. Expect them to have enough missiles to take all of this out. Russia has been fight at a disadvantage because it hasn't destroyed enough Ukrainian command centers and also unwilling to attack American ISR targets that are giving precious intel to Ukraine. China will go after these assets very early on.
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