If China Invades Taiwan: Bombers, Submarines and Missiles Dominate
Many hundreds Warplanes Burn on the asphalt of airbases Japan Guam. There were over 100 large warships that were anchored on the seafloor of the Taiwan Strait and Western Pacific. In just a few short weeks of violence, tens of thousands of people lost their lives.
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Wargames for Taiwan
This was the outcome of a series of wargames undertaken by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), simulating an amphibious landing operation in Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 2026. The games’ design and outcomes are detailed in a Report Retired Marine colonel Mark Cancian, and Eric Heginbotham, researchers
The analysts attempted to simulate realistically a wide range of factors, including the volume of long-range missile stocks, the density of aircraft over runway space, political restrictions and combat on ground, air, and sea. Situations were iterated 23 times, usually including variant technical and political assumptions – such as less effective missile defenses than expected, or delays before U.S. intervention – to assess the impact of those contingencies.
According to the authors, they developed the rules based on historical precedents. These include the offload throughput of amphibious landings in D-Day and Okinawa, the hunting successes of World War II submarines, and the past success/failure rates of anti-ship and ship-based ballistic missile defense systems.
Contrary to Classified Pentagon wargames CSIS games took place in later timesframes. All but three of them resulted with a decisive or partial Taiwan/U.S. victory. The outcome was sometimes resolved within two weeks. However, less favorable scenarios took longer. Usually, U.S. warplanes and submarines sank so many of the PLA Navy’s specialized amphibious landing ships that it became impossible for China to supply and reinforce the 30-60 battalions of PLA Marines and Soldiers It landed in southern Taiwan.
But Taipei’s and Washington’s victory came with staggering losses of warships, aircraft, and personnel at a rate not seen since World War II. Furthermore, several major components of the U.S. military prove either ineffectual or excessively vulnerable—If the wargame’s combat models are to be believed.
It is unlikely that Taiwan will invade the United States by 2026. In the scenario envisioned, it will occur. In the wargame. However, it is important to consider the risks and costs involved in this game. ‘moving parts’ This terrible conflict is of great interest to all sides
Japanese bases—prerequisite for a successful defense of Taiwan
U.S. airpower ordinarily hinges on relatively short-range jet fighters—F-16s, FA-18Es, F-22s, and F-35s—as well as somewhat longer-legged F-15s. However, despite capacity for in-flight refueling, these fighters can only bring sustained combat power to Taiwan’s defense if based relatively close. The only viable options here are carriers (proven susceptible to attack), Guam (useful but too far away to be ideal), as well as bases in Japan.
Cancian believed it was possible (but not certain) that Japan would allow U.S. warplanes to fly combat missions into Taiwan. But those bases would pose such a big threat—and tempting target—that PLA players were highly likely to attack them, to ruinous effect. These strikes would have likely caused Japan to join hostilities by contributing its own submarines, airpower, and airpower.
The chain of causality is complicated. Most likelys—so there’s ample possibility things could play out differently. CSIS simulations were able to simulate scenarios in which Japan didn’t join hostilities or refused U.S. access at bases in Japan. There were no prospects for a Taiwan/U.S. alliance in this scenario. Victory was not possible as China could use more missiles to bomb aircraft in Guam.
Australia was the only other ally expected to assist the U.S. in the war’s early phases, most importantly via bomber basing.
Carnage on the runway
Cramming hundreds of advanced U.S. fighters into a few bases within range of Taiwan might be the U.S.’s only option—but creates an inviting target for China’s A large inventory of short- and medium-range missiles.
The lack of hardened aircraft shelters (HASs) meant that landed U.S. warplanes could be blasted apart with ballistic missiles, which sprayed many cluster bomblets across a large area. In ‘base’ game scenarios, the U.S. and Japan aircraft losses averaged 449 jets—90 percent on the ground or carrier deck. Blue Team has more pessimistic scenarios. U.S./Japanese lost increased to 646 in an average scenario.
Cancian describes an apocalyptic scene.
“… late-deploying units to Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa will land at a base that has entire squadrons of wrecked U.S. and Japanese aircraft bulldozed to the side of the runway, hundreds of wounded in the base hospital, and temporary cemeteries to handle the many dead. Missile attacks and air combat will have wiped out squadrons that arrived only a few days earlier.”
He says that the U.S. could decrease these losses significantly by building hardened shelters for aircraft (estimated at $6,000,000 each), protecting aircraft from cluster weapons. This would force China to deploy more missiles. Japan could also allow U.S. aircraft to disperse into its civilian airports. This would reduce the effectiveness and efficiency of Chinese strikes. But that’s a Big if.
Fair enough, the Pentagon began practicing Agile Combat Employment (ACE), tactics Cancian believes that dispersing combat aircraft is a good idea but not sufficient.
In some of the game’s iterations, the Blue Team Also PLA aircraft were also attacked in China by the PLA airbases. The average number of PLA aircraft destroyed grew from 155 (all in flight) to 327.
Surprisingly the game doesn’t give much importance to air-to air combat. Because combat air patrols hunting enemy fighters consume more fuel and sinking PLAN amphibious vessels was considered a higher priority than combat air patrols, Blue Teams mainly assigned U.S. fighters for these missions. The base game didn’t accord a qualitative air-to-air advantage to the U.S. military due to China’s use of longer range PL-15 and PL-21 air to-air missiles, and the PLA’s ability to safely deploy airborne early warning planes near their own air defenses.
Bombers everywhere
The U.S.’s most effective weapon proved to be its fleet of long-range bombers—old B-52s, supersonic B-1 bombers?, and B-2 stealth bombers.
Three reasons exist:
-the bombers have the range to conduct strikes from bases in Hawaii, Alaska, and Australia—largely beyond the reach of Chinese missiles
They can carry many weapons in every strike
-each can (or might if upgraded to) launch JASSM-ER LRASM stealth cruise missiles Beyond the reach of air defenses.
These bombers launched a constant stream of sorties to sink large warships blocking Taiwan and amphibious vessels needed to transport PLA troops to the beachheads.
There’s a catch: by 2026, the report estimates the U.S. will only have 450 ship-killing LRASMs—all expended in the war’s first few days. LRASM is derived however from the JASSM ER, which is projected to have 3,650 weapons by 2022. Cancian believes JASSM could get software updates to make them at most partially effective against ships, as they have an infrared seekinger that can be used against moving targets. This would allow Air Force bombers to carry out standoff-range antiships attacks. weeks.
Cancian, however, also managed game iterations Without JASSMs that are anti-shipping effective have led to a sharp increase in U.S. loss.
Non-stealth aircraft could safely carry LRASM/JASSM-ER Missiles, particularly B-52s. The wargamers discovered stealth aircraft to be useful in employing shorter-range, more abundant weapons such as the JSOW or JDAM glide bombs to targets with high chances of evading any air defenses.
It’s worth noting, China’s fleet of old H-6 bombers is Also Effective, an H-6K regiment could send 96 supersonic antiship missiles at U.S. warships in a single strike.
Anti-access/area-denial—all it was hyped to be?
In the 2010s, the idea that China’s long-range missile weapons, including Exotic anti-ship ballistic missilesThis would allow you to create anti-access/area-denial zones for surface warships became a buzzword in security discourse—then Critics reacted negatively to the announcement The term was misunderstood and hyped up.
However, the CSIS wargames seemed to validate the concept; China could launch so many anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles from aircraft, warships, and shore-based launchers that U.S. surface combatants couldn’t approach Taiwan without being destroyed.
Two U.S. carriers struck groups, one near Taiwan, were deployed in an attempt to deter war. However, they lost the battle (along with 96 fighters onboard) in the first turn. Their air defense missiles had already been exhausted.
Consequently, the dense PLA anti-ship firepower kept powerful U.S. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers Ticonderoga-Classes Cruisers are prohibited from entering weapons range in order to impact the conflict around Taiwan. And even then, 15-25 U.S. were usually lost during hostilities—the higher rate approaching one per day. Cancian claims that the U.S. Navy should deploy rescue tugs, floatplanes to prevent such large losses.
It’s worth noting A2/AD skeptics argue the reconnaissance and command-and-control capacity to reliably form a real-time spotter-to-shooter kill chain Targeting moving ships in the Pacific is much more difficult than most people realize. That may cast doubt on the efficiency with which both sides’ anti-ship missile arsenals are converted into hits in the game.
In the Taiwan fight, both Army and Marine ground forces were ineffective
Due to China’s missile-based blockade of Taiwan – reinforced by a picket line of surface warships and submarines – attempts to deploy U.S. Marine or Army ground forces to Taiwan by air or sea proved futile in the game; those forces were destroyed in transit whenever it was attempted.
Cancian claims that these outcomes raise questions about the idea of investing in. Marine Littoral Regiments (MLRs), and Army Multi-Domain Task Forces expected to assist the Navy’s battle for sea control using truck-mounted anti-ship missiles. Even though an MLR was unable to deploy forward in Taiwan, it still sank five ships with its 72 missiles. Naval Strike Missiles (range 115 miles), but then couldn’t resupply. In Cancian’s estimation, the MLR’s output was equivalent to one raid by a bomber squadron.
By contrast, he argues it’s more useful to increase the number of land-based anti-ship missiles sold to Taiwan, including 400 Harpoon missiles On order. He also mentioned that the longer-range Maritime Strike Tomahawks could be used to allow an MLR in Okinawa.
Submarines are the killer
Besides bombers, the other U.S. system that could effectively hunt littoral waters near Taiwan was the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered attack submarines. Each submarine was able to sink an average of eight large PLA vessels per week in the highly target-rich Taiwan Strait.
As nuclear-powered subs can operate indefinitely underwater, they were unaffected by China’s many anti-ship missiles and constrained primarily by their need to replenish after expending all torpedoes. However, dense anti-submarine assets protecting the PLA amphibious force did manage to inflict 20 percent attrition on deployed U.S. submarines every game turn—losses the U.S. couldn’t make back at present rates of construction/retirement.
Taiwan’s ground forces are key
In the game, PLA missile attacks easily obliterated Taiwan’s navy and air force in a couple of days. Only the Taiwanese squadrons at fortified mountain bases managed to survive, but they were unable to generate sorties due in part to the cratering of their runways. Cancian thus joins the chorus of analysts arguing Taiwan shouldn’t invest in large ships and jet fighters.
More survivable are Taiwan’s land-based anti-ship and anti-air weapons, and its ground forces, which must contain PLA landing forces at the beachhead, preventing them from securing seaports that enable China to resupply the invasion using its many civilian ships.
One major assumption of the wargame’s scenario is that Taiwan’s forces will vigorously resist invasion. Sometimes, however, a country’s armed forces or ruling elite collapse and concede quickly at the sudden onset of war. But predicting a country’s willingness to fight to the last can be tough, as Putin discovered to Russia’s detriment in his invasion Ukraine.
Critique of CSIS Approach
Wargames are unavoidably imperfect attempts to simulate reality—though some more so than others. So it’s unsurprising that several experts on Asian-Pacific security have criticized aspects of the CSIS wargame’s mechanics, underlying assumptions and findings.
Perhaps the most salient is that China is unlikely to attempt an invasion of Taiwan by 2026 while suffering such a capability mismatch—Beijing’s own military modernization plans to peg the mid-2030s, or Positively 2027As when its military will also be available. The PLA Navy will be then ready. many additional amphibious ships, missile destroyers/cruisers, aircraft carriers, Stealth aircraft, Anti-drones and hypersonic Missiles.
Some argue it’s more likely the PLA would initiate a prolonged blockade and/or bombardment of Taiwan before attempting an amphibious landing—a longer timeframe posing more politically complex choices for the U.S. and Japan.
Lastly, there’s a Lots of uncertainty about the realism of the game’s combat mechanics because a real-life maritime-centric conflict of such an enormous scale has not been fought since World War II. It is possible to debate whether the unexpected outcomes of the wargame are due to clarifying insights or flaws in combat resolution rules and scenario assumptions.
These issues aside, CSIS wargames may still offer food for thought about the terrible human, political, and technical consequences of an all out conflict over Taiwan’s fate. They also draw attention to the strengths and weaknesses of opposing forces.
Sébastien Roblin writes on the technical, historical and political aspects of international security and conflict for publications including The National Interest, NBC News, Forbes.com, Boring war is 19FortyFiveHe is Defense-in-Depth editor at. He holds a Master’s degree from Georgetown University and served with the Peace Corps in China. Follow his articles here Twitter.
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