This is where things get a bit less certain.
The US can rely on submarines for naval dominance, and China doesn’t yet have a full response.
That’s a massively questionable and situational statement. While the PLAN lacks the ability to effectively hunt for USN SSNs and SSBNs out in the deep pacific, but in and around China’s coast and even out to the first island chain, that’s an entirely different matter.
China’s surface fleets have formidable ASW capabilities that are even more comprehensive than the USN’s own surface fleet owning to fleet wide TAS and WDS as well as its large FFG fleet and even its 056A corvette fleet that also have comprehensive ASW capabilities. It also has a large and growing fixed and rotary wing ASW and MPA fleet. Not to mention it’s massive SSK fleet.
SSNs are also significantly handicapped by the limited range and speed of their primary weapon the torpedo. An SSN will meet to get within 50km of its target to attack. Significantly closer if it wants any realistic chance of scoring a hit against enemy warships. That would put them well within range of PLAN Yu7 ASROCs, which can splash down on the point of torpedo launch within minutes of launch. A surface fleet on high alert will also have ASW helicopters airborne 24/7, so those will be close behind.
This means that realistically speaking, SSNs attacking a typical PLAN surface fleet is going to have a high chance of making it a suicide attack, since PLAN retaliation will be swift and likely comprehensive and persistent.
In a shooting war, the US can degrade China’s construction capacity via strikes from submarines and local bases, whereas China will struggle to strike the US mainland conventionally.
In a shooting war, US local bases will be gone in the opening hours since China has orders of magnitude more powerful strike capabilities.
Submarines have limited missile numbers and all those missiles are subsonic, making them easy to detect and intercept by the PLA’s airborne assets.
The only things that might have a reasonable chance of punching through PLA air defences are the USN’s SSGNs via saturation attack. But there are few and fewer of those boats with each passing year. Moreover submarines will need to return to port for weapons restock. With regional bases gone, they will have to go back to Pearl to be reasonably safe from being killed at port during replenishment. It’s certainly a viable pot shot strategy, but it’s not realistically going to have high chances of success.
That means US response to a blockade and degradation of Taiwan can be to blockade and degrade mainland China.
China can do without seaborne trade altogether under war time. Russia alone would be able to provide the bulk of the raw materials China’s factories would need. China is self sufficient in food, so no need for exports of food at all. That’s not even accounting for the rest of Asia, the ME and even Europe, that can all trade with China via land routes.
OTOH, how well would America do without all manufactured goods and components from China? How will European consumers manage? What is America going to do if European flagged ships openly ignores their self imposed blockade of China? Sink their allies’ ships?
Economic reality can hit just as hard as military.
The Chinese response has to be to force the US out of the second island chain, including their bases and submarines.
The questions roughly are:
- Does China have the capacity to blockade/degrade Taiwan? (Yes)
- Does the US have the capacity to blockade/degrade China using its submarines and local bases? (Yes)
- Does China have the capacity to destroy the US submarines and local bases? (Probably not yet)
It’s kinda funny that the most useful contribution the Japanese can make during such a war is to stay unimpeachably neutral.
Because if they jump in on America’s side, China will take the best first island chain islands from them and basically make that island chain as its new fortress-shield to comprehensively protect the mainland coast from attack.
