Those occupied islands can be used to place SAMs. In addition they have an airfield and harbor where, once local air superiority (not even over all of Taiwan, just the strait) is attained, you can start putting cruise missile, artillery and rocket batteries there.
You don't stop at Penghu, just don't bypass it. I used to think the same but it looks like bypassing it may not be possible, and suppression could be more costly than just landing Marines and taking it.
22 weeks training for officer. After that, you can sign up for 1 year. If no issue, then you can sign up for 1 year contract, 2 years contract or even 3 years contract.
As the Ukraine war is demonstrating, morale is very important. Think about the effect on ROC soldiers morale when every day they hear the news about another island surrendering. They'll just wait until it's their turn to surrender.
Too slow. Anything that extends America's reaction time is too slow. The most important thing is to demoralize America; make it so that China advances so fast they can't have a briefing because by the time they're done with a 30 minute meeting, the situation already shifted further in China's favor. Make sure they know that Taiwan is a lost cause; slowly island-hopping is giving them the oppertunity to move while Taiwan is still intact. The Taiwanese will also be demoralized when in 15 minutes, they realize that every military installation and capital building is already on fire from the missile barrage and the PLAAF are all over their skies. Those who want to fight don't even know where to report to because their commanding officers are all dead or without communication and their bases are rubble; 0-100 total utter flaming chaos. Heavier sleepers in non-strategic regions should sleep right through it; they should go to sleep with everything normal and wake up to the knock of PLA soldiers delivering their relief/aid package with him wondering if it's April Fools or Halloween. Demoralizing, overwhelming and stunningly fast: that's what's needed and the PLARF are geared to do it. Don't play with your food when there are other hungry large animals eyeballing you and your meal.
I agree, after the opening hour with missile strikes we're probably very quickly gonna see drones and airplanes over Taiwan 'cleaning up' things.
No, nothing likes that. They used to have conscription from 2 years to 1 year to now 4 months. 4 months is a joke but they can't do much about it as conscription is very unpopular.
Penghu is definitely a must take, same with Kinmen, matsu and dongyin. but those two on the east of taiwan you circled are pointless unless the war is dragging on for so long and the chinese decides that it is worth to take those two and place anti air/anti ship assets on them. even then resupplying those two islands will be tough.