PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

The top American military commander in the Indo-Pacific said the US would defeat China in a conflict over Taiwan now but warned that it faced increasing challenges as China rapidly expanded its military.

“The United States will prevail in the conflict as it stands now, with the force that we have right now,” Admiral Samuel Paparo told the McCain Institute’s annual Sedona Forum in Arizona on Friday.

00CuriousObserver said:

The top American military commander in the Indo-Pacific said the US would defeat China in a conflict over Taiwan now but warned that it faced increasing challenges as China rapidly expanded its military.

“The United States will prevail in the conflict as it stands now, with the force that we have right now,” Admiral Samuel Paparo told the McCain Institute’s annual Sedona Forum in Arizona on Friday.

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It would be gross negligence for any uniformed officer in any military to publicly say "we will fail and die for nothing" no matter how true it may or may not be. Leaders are obliged to maintain morale irrespective of the truth.

bsdnf said:

No, Taiwan will not even within the framework of "one country, two systems".

The patience of the officials and the public has been exhausted, and the period of preferential treatment to Taiwan is over, Taiwan can only choose between complete reunification by peace or complete reunification by force. Most mainlanders don't believe Taiwan will choose peaceful reunification, so force is pretty much the only option, it's just a matter of when.

While tourism&trade between Taiwan and the mainland ends, there is already very little contact between the populations, compassion and empathy based on daily contact fades, the mainland population's acceptance of war and collateral damage will continue to rise. Even though the authorities have been suppressing, "Keep the island but not the people(留岛不留人)" extremism has become more common. Of course, this means the same for the Taiwanese population, especially DPP supporters, but sorry, the PLA packs a bigger punch

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Honestly, after visiting Taiwan recently and based on my own analysis and assessments of US and Chinese capabilities I'd say the US and its DPP lackies are even more cooked then they even realize, especially if things play out the way I'm expecting. The only real variance is in timing rather than conditions at this point.

Shilao: “If you follow the original report of SCMP, you will find that this survey was completed before Trump took office.

Although it claims that the samples come from China's 1-4 tier provinces, it was conducted online. Although 2,211 questionnaires were received, the executor was Dynata (Hong Kong) instead of Dynata (Beijing).

The question was "Unification should not be achieved by force under any circumstances" instead of "Reserve the right to use force to unify Taiwan under any circumstances"; the survey said that 55.1% of people believe that Taiwan should not be attacked, but 74% believe that China should liberate Taiwan by force within 10 years.

In the survey, 36% support military intervention when Japan amends its peace constitution, 66.1% support the Russia’s attack on Ukraine, 69.6% support Sino-US economic cooperation, and 79.7% support war with India, but the title is...”

In short, clearly misleading survey and SCMP's typical clickbait report

00CuriousObserver said:

The top American military commander in the Indo-Pacific said the US would defeat China in a conflict over Taiwan now but warned that it faced increasing challenges as China rapidly expanded its military.

“The United States will prevail in the conflict as it stands now, with the force that we have right now,” Admiral Samuel Paparo told the McCain Institute’s annual Sedona Forum in Arizona on Friday.

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Curious, so does he "want" w@r now?

GulfLander said:

Curious, so does he "want" w@r now?

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Nobody wants war really, but the calculus for the US is that if there must be a war, the best time was yesterday and the second best today, for the balance of power will always continue to shift towards that of the PLA. It's why you see America constantly baiting the PLA, without genuine interest in starting a war because that would be too politically costly to any president for the Sino-American War to happen under his administration.

China needs to emphasize more on fighter jets and aircrafts.

Every articles written seems to be talking about building new antiship missiles or mass up antiship missiles. With enough antiship missiles, it will overwhelm your ships.

It is best if the ships operates at the border instead of sailing far away during a conflict. That way you can have overlapping missile protection from the navy and land and air.

I hope China A2A missile can intercept cruise missiles. I know US tested it before. It is better to have a triad missile interception system.

zlixOS said:

Nobody wants war really, but the calculus for the US is that if there must be a war, the best time was yesterday and the second best today, for the balance of power will always continue to shift towards that of the PLA. It's why you see America constantly baiting the PLA, without genuine interest in starting a war because that would be too politically costly to any president for the Sino-American War to happen under his administration.

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If US starts an preemptive war, no countries(most likely) will allow US to use their land during conflict. It means US will only have to depend on aircraft carrier groups to attack. It cannot achieve a victory like that.

bebops said:

China needs to emphasize more on fighter jets and aircrafts.

Every articles written seems to be talking about building new antiship missiles or mass up antiship missiles. With enough antiship missiles, it will overwhelm your ships.

It is best if the ships operates at the border instead of sailing far away during a conflict. That way you can have overlapping missile protection from the navy and land and air.

I hope China A2A missile can intercept cruise missiles. I know US tested it before. It is better to have a triad missile interception system.

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Two different flavors of fifth gen and two more flavors of sixth gen not good enough for you?

siegecrossbow said:

Two different flavors of fifth gen and two more flavors of sixth gen not good enough for you?

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Yes, that is good progress. For all of this to happen, it still take years.

I am confident that China will outproduced U.S in 6th gen production because they both had their maiden flight 1 years apart from each other.. The reason that U.S outproduced China for 5th gen is because US has a very early start.

I would be more confident if every manned platform (ships, aircraft, subs) are accompanied with 2-3 unmanned platform or drones.