Sounds like a troll.
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
Unfortunately no, but I wish someone did ask them
I read the original interview. The Taiwanese reporter forced the commander of the Third Fleet to answer questions related to China. The commander of the Third Fleet kept repeating that the reporter should ask the commander of the Indo-Pacific theater. This is embarrassing and annoying.
I don't think military assets can hide well at sea near choke points under today's surveillance methods.
Blockade is not going to work where there is a large discrepancy in production capacity of two countries.
Also, the US have choke points too. The biggest one is under frequent rockets/missiles/UAV attacks as we speak now.
Your own commercial shipping is already being impacted, and you are still talking about blockading China.
It's not all that can be done, but I do think it will escalate along with rising tensions in East Asia/Southeast Asia, so the US will have to choose between one and the other, cause it does not have enough presence to fight in both theaters at once.
If Israel falls, say goodbye to US dollars. No one is going to believe in US military capability to 'protect' them if they would allow even Israel to fall. Which is why I don't think the US can keep hiding from getting involved in the Middle East.
China is not even trading Taiwan for Israel now. She is trading US backing out of Japan + Philippines + SK+ second Island chain for Isreal.
Scratch that. She is gonna end US dollar through Israel, and the US is gonna have to get involved in the Middle East, whether she likes it or now.
China has understood that the point of no return had been reached since the outbreak of Covid, and she has been laying down preparatory work since then.
Last edited:
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I am not entirely sure what you are trying to say here unfortunately.
But the overwhelming volume of trade that goes through the SCS are to and from China.
In the event of basically WWIII, there would be no real need for China to enforce a blockade in the SCS, as who would such a blockade be aimed at in any case? ASEAN will mostly remain neutral and the Philippines are so insignificant and irrelevant that a blockade is totally unnecessary to knock them back to the Stone Age.
If you are referring to SK and Japan, it would be ludicrous for them to try to get any shipping through the SCS to start with. Any blockade against them would be far more effectively done in the western pacific since any traffic to the west and north of Taiwan will obviously be heading to them or America, so would be obvious targets and removes the biggest logistical headache with a blockade in the modern age of IFF.
Also, in the event of them entering the war against China, cut supply lines will be the least of their worries as their homelands will be subject to systematic and sustained Chinese bombardment.
To keep them alive, America will have to run relief convoys from CONUS. So the main action will be out in the pacific, not SCS. China has already secured the SCS, any serious attempt to fight China there will be effective mass suicide for hostile naval forces.
Exactly. This is why the US has been incrementally relocating its Ryukyu-based forces to Guam. It knows that everything in the immediate vicinity of China will be subject to intense and sustained bombardment by Chinese missiles. Of course that includes Ryukyu, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Philippines. IIRC China can produce 1,000 cruise missiles a day without even going to a full war economy. That means all these places will run out of defensive missiles/interceptors/whatever very quickly while China keeps churning cruise missiles out like it's no big deal.
Do the math on what ? on how many 12.7 mm warning shells that are needed for intercepting commercial convoys in the Adaman or Celebes, or Java sea? "Magazine depth" on what type of weapons that are needed for commerce raiding? Are NSM or AGM-158 suddenly needed to strike at the container ships or crude transports? Or are we talking about VLO platforms that are need to approach the LNG carriers with gigantic AESA arrays?
I think you are still thinking about some constant exchanges around the FIC, which is not what is likely to happen at all. That would be military fans' wet dreams, but in reality what is much more likely to happen is a lower grade cat an mouse game along many of the world's shipping lanes.
And it still doesn't seem like you actually READ what I originally wrote.
Everything you have replied to me here basically border on irrelevance to what I was discussing originally.
One point is that Japan/South Korea/Philippines are not the US mainland.
If ASEAN becomes a hellhole, with the major players shelling each other’s infrastructure and ship traffic cut off, the US still has a whole continent of production untouched. There are questions as to how fast they’d be able to re-industrialise, but without competition from China, and with the right impetus, it’d happen eventually.
it’s a similar calculus as Ukraine. Russia is shelling Ukraine, and Ukraine is (to some extent) shelling Russia. As far as the US is concerned, they’re just bankrolling a former Russian ally and neighbour to kill Russians. The only big loss was European access to Russian gas, which was a win from the US perspective.
If ASEAN becomes a hellhole, with the major players shelling each other’s infrastructure and ship traffic cut off, the US still has a whole continent of production untouched. There are questions as to how fast they’d be able to re-industrialise, but without competition from China, and with the right impetus, it’d happen eventually.
it’s a similar calculus as Ukraine. Russia is shelling Ukraine, and Ukraine is (to some extent) shelling Russia. As far as the US is concerned, they’re just bankrolling a former Russian ally and neighbour to kill Russians. The only big loss was European access to Russian gas, which was a win from the US perspective.
I agree that the US also needs allocate a certain amount of force protection (i.e. ARG transporting marine brigades), and for supply route patrols. It is somewhat mitigated by the fact that PLAN has relatively little logistic capacity compared to the USN, and has a tiny fraction of the supply bases that US/allies would enjoy over key sea lanes.
Yeah, the US, and perhaps Japan, may lose access to certain SEA markets in the mean time, and Japan / SK would also need to reroute certain supplies over alternate routes, such as routing to the east of the Marianas, through western Caroline islands, the Banda sea, then go through Lombok to the Indian Ocean. It will be more expensive, but should avoid the bulk of the PLAN/PLAAF's reach.
I don't think the US/Japan/Australia in that case would aim to bring China's economy to a halt, but rather that make its access to certain parts of the world, such as Indian Ocean rim, S America, etc, very difficult.