I've been following the Ukraine thread. Let's make something clear here. China is not going to invade Taiwan anytime soon. It has its own timeline and own plan to coerce Taiwan. If you've been following their military development and Shilao podcast, you should have an idea of when that is.
I think the plan is to continue ramping up pressure with air incursions and testing air defenses around Taiwan, larger military exercises in East China Sea and South China Sea. Even more training and operations off those island runways in Spratleys. As more J-16s and J-20s join service, they will be able to do more and more around Taiwan and Japanese islands. This achieves PLAAF's goal of improving realistic training, upping operational tempo and completely understanding how Taiwan and Japan would react to PLAAF incursions. Keep in mind that there are a lot of F-35s that will be coming to Japan in the coming years. It's also a great opportunity for PLA to try out there tactics in detecting and then tracking F-35s.
Could China launch an attack on Taiwan right now? Sure, if Taiwan decides to unilaterally change status quo. But China launching unilateral actions would just be too risky. They need to get semiconductor industry and other key industry have domestic supply chain setup. They need to have all the energy pipelines setup and domestic reserves increased so they can fend off long term cut to their trade routes. They need to somehow secure access to all the farming imports they would need. All these things take time.
Long term, the goal has to be coercing Taiwan to accept some level of re-unification without an actual war. Maybe that would involve allowing Taiwan to keep their government and police, but having PLA control the military bases. Like what they had with Hong Kong except maybe give Taiwan more autonomy. A lot of this would involve putting both hard pressure and growing economic trades even more with Taiwan. At this point, ROCAF is already feeling overly strained from PLAAF pressure. They don't have enough F-16Vs. The IDFs and M2Ks don't stand a chance against J-16s and overwhelming EW aircraft presence let alone J-20s. With all the interceptions, F-16V pilots don't even have enough time to train. They are overly strained. That's why you see so many fatal crashes. Why would ordinary Taiwanese want to become a pilot if they can't get adequately trained and keep seeing other pilots crashing and dying. That's why ROCAF is having a real tough time recruiting pilots. Over time, PLAAF and defeat ROCAF and Taiwan defense without firing a missile. This just demoralizes Taiwanese military and everyone in the Taiwanese government. Again, China's goal has to be reunification without actual war. It's well on its way there. The Taiwanese elites don't think Taiwan can stay independent for that long. A lot of them live in mainland or HK already. It doesn't make a huge difference for them if Taiwan demilitarizes.
In an unfortunate/sad event that China cannot get Taiwan to accept peaceful re-unification and decide to attack, I think it would look a lot different than what Russia has shown so far. There is no way PLAAF will go this long into a conflict without massively using EW assets to disable Taiwan communication, infrastructure and military. How does Ukraine still have a semi functional air defense right now? That won't happen in a mainland invasion over Taiwan. Taiwan power grids, cell phone networks and communications will get shut down pretty quickly. As we discussed earlier in the thread, Taiwanese Air Force will be worn out by the time invasion starts. The air defense/radar will get neutralized very quickly by all the attack aircraft and EW aircraft that PLAAF can employ. there will be a full blockade of Taiwan. I think they'd be able to take over all the major TV/Radio stations and government buildings in Taipei and Taichung in the first few days and just get Taiwanese people to accept that there is no point in fighting on. Again, I expect a quick/effective strike to build on the existing perception that China is too powerful to get Taiwan to give up. It's a multi-year and decade process. The last thing China wants is a whole bunch of crying photos/videos on social media sharing how terrible an invasion is.
