While i'd certainly agree china can't hope to pull off an invasion of taiwan with the US fully involved, i do believe it would take quite a bit more than a missile strike to achieve that. It'd take proper aircraft strikes, a lot of them, over a fairly long period of time.
Missiles in themselves, be they cruise missiles or ballistic missiles, with multiple warheads, single warheads, submunitions, etc, etc - are not used on their own. Not in a real conflict. It is one thing to fire a few dozen at a factory in africa, at some buildings in afghanistan, etc, etc, but agianst a wide range of military targets such tactic is only a preparation for proper, *sustained* strikes. That can not be stressed enough. Sustained strikes.
Lets imagine china using just their missiles against taiwan. What good would that do? It'd paralize the system for a little while, disrupt communications to a certain extent, and it'd last anywhere from several hours to at worst a day or so. Same thing with air bases. Air operations would be at a pause, until runways get cleared of mines or repaired (which iraqis semi-routinely did in a matter of hours during desert storm) and then sorties would go on.
Command and control centers are not fixed. Neither in taiwan nor in china nor in US. Communication network is a fluid thing. You destroy one comm array, a new one gets erected in a matter of hours or days, depending on the situation. Then there's a whole network of mobile comm assets, on wheels. There are landlines in both us, taiwan and china that could be used for part of the comm needs, which are easely repairable. All that is a fundamental fact which, naturally, can be disputed but then there is no need to have any sort of debate on it, nor will i adress it further. We could only agree to disagree.
That being said, lets move on. Strategic fuel supply for both taiwan and china can be cut off, either with a sustained and systematic blockade or with proper *sustained* strikes. Actually i'd rather use the term "paused". But we need to distinguish strategic fuel supplies on the level of whole country, be it taiwan or china, and tactical fuel supplies. Location of strategic fuel supplies are fairly well known and they're located in a relatively small number of places, each holding vast amounts of fuel in peacetime. Tactical fuel supplies are NOT known to anyone. Sure, intelligence services may get lucky and know where parts of them at a certain time, then lose track, and so on. But in general, those are far too dispersed to be tracked and targeted. By china, taiwan, US or any other country in the world. Sure, some countries are better prepared than other, some will have more tankers, more inflatable fuel holds, etc, etc. Depending on the size of country's armed forces, we could be talking anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of various smaller fuel holds. Keep in mind, these are not necesarrily all military installations. In fact, most of them would be civilian assets. But rest assured, capitalism, communism or whatewerism, in a state of a serious threat, US, taiwan, china or vatican would put every resource in the country to use for whatever purpose is seen fit. Be it regular diesel fuel, marine diesel, jet kerosine, etc, etc.
China can not hope to paralyze taiwan with missile strikes alone for any more than several hours or perhaps a day or so in certain areas. Same applies for Taiwan striking china, US striking china or china striking US assets on guam or kadena or wherever. Missile strikes are not even close to a permanent solution.
So, to try to cut the story short: I believe if there will ever be a proper US campaign against chinese assets it'd go something like this:
Positioning of needed assets in place, both for strikes and for defense. That means all the ohio SSGNs, (its almost certain not all four would be available at any given time, its more realistic to figure three would be ready for deployment. That doesnt mean US would wait for all three to get in place in order to start the strieks) Positioning of a certain, minimum number of Carrier battlegroups, which could be 2, 3, 5 or whatever number of carriers gets deemed necessary for the given opening missions. Very important, a quite large and potent air defense fleet, courtesy of USN, positioned around Okinawa. Kadena AFB is simply far too crucial to US and no first strike would begin without securing Okinawa. Granted, chinese could choose do a preventive strike against US assets but while that could get them some short term advantage, long term political repercussions would be, in my opinion, far too grave. Even so, a missile strike against kadena, like any other missile strike, would at best render the base inoperational for several days.
Depending on political situation, USAF may or may not use additional bases in the vicinity, except for Kadena and Guam, for fighter strikes. PErhaps with some countries only use of non combat platforms would be negotiated. PErhaps with some only fly overs would be negotiated, etc etc. All this is, even though extremely important, simply impossible to calculate and i'd ask that we all stay out of that topic. It simply can not be known what sort of aid could various neighbouring countries offer to any side in the conflict.
When enough assets are in place, strikes would start. First with various cruise missiles, be they fired from the subs, surface ships, US bombers of various multirole fighters. Depending on the platform and the location of the launch, which are again dependant on the various bases around china, some missiles could only hope to reach certain parts of chinese coastline while others could reach a bit farther inland. Since one wants to mass the attack at key spots and not disperse it, it is very likely coastline and areas nearest to the coastline would be hit with greatest number of such missiles, with only seleceted targets inland being hit as well.
Key would be not only to negate the immediate threat to taiwan, but to try to negate, as much as possible, possible interceptors coming from inland china, against the US aircraft coming in the second wave, shortly after the initial missile strikes.
Number of missiles fired is really not that important, when compared to the aircraft strikes that *must* and *would* follow. One could hope to do considerate damage with a few hundred cruise missiles to 5 airbases, perhaps even covering every square meter with some sort of submunition, in hope to destroy aircraft on the ground. BUT. It is more likely that missile strikes would be used to deny the planes on the ground to get up, as much as possible. (that doesnt mean just hitting the runways) Far less missiles per airbase would be needed for that, meaning more airbases could be hit simultaneously. And then the airplanes would try and hit the actual planes at the base, carrying far more warheads than missile strikes could offer.
B2s werent used on their own even in 1999 against Serbia. They still had fighter cover and they still had jammers aiding them. (of course, not flying right next to them) B2s would certainly not be used on their own against china. Someplace, where applicable, a flight of jammer airplanes would follow them, with their own fighter cover, in addition to a flightl of Raptors protecting the B2s, flying close enough for a quick reaction.
But it really depends on what would be struck. If we're talking about coastline, less cover is needed, perhaps there would indeed be situations where lone B2s could fly. But the moment you cross the coastline, and the deeper you go inland, one can forget about not being spotted, Low RCS or not. I'm not talking about tracking the planes for immediate engagement, but sporadic events of planes being spotted. It doesnt matter how stealthy a plane is, if a radar makes a circle around an object, it is quaranteed to get at least four spikes and four large radar returns. In the real world, there'd be more than four spikes, albeit of different sizes. But the enemy would know someone is out there and they would know the approximate location and path. Now, depending on how good the SEAD/DEAD missions were, the AFB denial strikes were, the enemy might be able to pool enough assets to try for a proper interception or not. But these are details.
In general, by the end of the conflict, one can be sure of the following: chinese navy and chinese fixed navy infrastructure would be more or less obliterated. That chinese air force would be seriously shrunk in size and air force infrastructure close to the coastline would be heavily damaged, with inland infrastructure being selectively targeted and damaged to a certain extent. That chinese army would be more or less intact, save for selected infrastructure points, but that doesnt include the AD network which would, again, be selectively destroyed or shrunk in size, against mostly around selected coastline areas. Percentage wise, a fair portion of air surveillance and AD network would still be operational.
On the other side, a fair number of USN aircraft would be destroyed, be that in dozens or a few hundred. A slightly smaller number of USAF aircraft would be destroyed, including an occasional B2 and F22, but most of them would probably be F15s.
Several USN attack subs might get destroyed and perhaps a couple of USN surface ships. Probably no carriers would be sunk (due to USN not risking them and keeping them in location where they can protect each other and/or be fairly far away from the chinese coastline. USN aviators and F18s would be more expendable.) though one or, at best/worst two may get damaged enough so they'd have to withdraw for repairs.
Please keep in mind that the first several paragraphs are important, the last few with my projected casualties are really insignificant and are here for illustration purposes only. Naturally, they could vary widely. If you're gonna comment, try not to comment on the numbers, comment on something more fundamental. Thank you.
