A peaceful end would be easily obtainable. It would only mean giving up the threat of American interference.
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- Thread starter Gollevainen
- Start date
Both the main island and Penghu should be taken at the same time. That was my thinking. If you can bypass Penghu and go directly to main island with confidence, then go for it. That was @steel21's idea.
Bottomline, you don't waste time on taking off-shore islands first, or naval blockade, or economic embargo or any such protracted battles. You go directly to the main island and finish the business in under a week. Mainland China can do that, even today.
if there is one thing i learned about the CCP in the last few years, it is that this is an organization that does not take shortcuts. and if it remains that way, then it will take penghu first. the idea of taking penghu and the main island at the same time is not sound, because if for whatever reason that operation fails, then the forces that already made landing on the main island will face the danger of being cut off.
the campaign should of course be kept as short as possible but it does not mean cutting corners. penghu must be taken before any attempt is made to land on taiwan itself. same with matsu, and dongyin, but to a lesser degree of urgency. all of these islands house anti-air and anti-ship assets, they are well fortified. the anti-ship assets especially can do serious damage if it manages to hit a 071/075 craft. yes it will take more time, but it is necessary, and it can be done concurrently with the bombing campaign of the main island. taking these islands is actually not all negative on the main battle, because it keeps the defender guessing as to the main axis of advance. whereas if you were to bypass penghu, then you make the intent of landing in taipei pretty obvious. penghu can also house helicopters for quick delivery of supplies and casevac.
the counterargument to taking penghu is that it will allow time for the US to intervene, my response to that is, again, knowing the CCP, it will not make this move unless it is confident enough to do it with US intervention.
It appears that your entire arguments are based on the claim that "you know CCP." I'm impressed by that confidence.
Let me cut to the chase: you don't know CCP. Not at all.
We can agree to disagree though.
well main effort isn't necessarily the only objective, that is why operations are broken down into phases. taking penghu does not cede momentum, to the contrary it reinforces momentum for the PLA because it will precipitate a cognitive breakdown in taiwan's defence. thinking from the perspective of a taiwan commander, if i have penghu, i know a direct attack on the main island will have to be in the north, sort of out of the range of penghu's anti-ship assets. but if penghu is lost the the PLA, then there is really no telling where the landing will take place.
Another way that a penghu campaign can achieve cognitive/psycological dissonance in taiwan's commandership is by forcing them to make the choice to abandon penghu themselves. taiwan's most effective assets, as we know, are its anti-air/anti-ship missiles. now a move on penghu will present the defenders the choices of whether to use them and risk being exposed, or to "save them for later".
i disagree with the idea that penghu can be suppressed, simply because it requires immense amount of air power that might be needed elsewhere, and it is not risk-free. and if the PLA were able to achieve 100% situational awareness by air, then taking it would not be too difficult either way.
as i said before, time constraints isnt a good reason for bypassing penghu. if the PLA cannot defend the battlefield from intervention then it is simply not ready to fight.
a parallel i would draw on was Soviet attack on Berlin. there was certianly time contraints in that one, and the main effort was also fairly obvious, but it does not negate the necessity of one, destroying the salient on the soviet right flank; and two, expend vast amount of time and blood to take Zeelow heights.
excellent rebuttal, very eloquently put XD
That's a highly optimistic schedule.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I think you guys are arguing over semantics with minimal practical difference.
Any invasion of Taiwan will need preparatory missile and air strikes for days in preparation, and will not be kicked off with a grand Chinese armada setting off.
Penghu will be hit hard as part of that initial bombardment, and may well be taken by marines and special forces before the main invasion force sets off.
However, the key is that the main invasion will not be meaningfully impacted by the progress made with physically taking Penghu, because the bombardment and ongoing 24/7 drone and manned aircraft monitoring and precision strikes on it will entirely neutralise it as any sort of threat, irrespective of whether or not pockets of resistance remains at the time the Chinese main invasion force is scheduled to go.
The island is so small and it’s positions so well mapped out, I would expect a minimum of 80-90% of high threat assets based there to be destroyed by the opening strikes. With drones able to maintain 24/7 monitoring of every inch of it, anything that survives will be ID’d and engaged as soon as it makes ready to fire. Even if a handful of AShMs do managed to be launched by some minor miracle, the chances of them being able to penetrate PLAN multi-layered overlapping fleet defences is vanishingly small. It would be supremely lucky for any missile to strike any lone escorts at the edge of the fleet, to try to hit a principle capital ship in the middle of a task force, with multiple escorts all able to engaged incomings before they can reach the capitol ships. Well I fancy my chances of winning the lottery more.
Any invasion of Taiwan will need preparatory missile and air strikes for days in preparation, and will not be kicked off with a grand Chinese armada setting off.
Penghu will be hit hard as part of that initial bombardment, and may well be taken by marines and special forces before the main invasion force sets off.
However, the key is that the main invasion will not be meaningfully impacted by the progress made with physically taking Penghu, because the bombardment and ongoing 24/7 drone and manned aircraft monitoring and precision strikes on it will entirely neutralise it as any sort of threat, irrespective of whether or not pockets of resistance remains at the time the Chinese main invasion force is scheduled to go.
The island is so small and it’s positions so well mapped out, I would expect a minimum of 80-90% of high threat assets based there to be destroyed by the opening strikes. With drones able to maintain 24/7 monitoring of every inch of it, anything that survives will be ID’d and engaged as soon as it makes ready to fire. Even if a handful of AShMs do managed to be launched by some minor miracle, the chances of them being able to penetrate PLAN multi-layered overlapping fleet defences is vanishingly small. It would be supremely lucky for any missile to strike any lone escorts at the edge of the fleet, to try to hit a principle capital ship in the middle of a task force, with multiple escorts all able to engaged incomings before they can reach the capitol ships. Well I fancy my chances of winning the lottery more.
Offtop: Penghu archipelago is ~twice the area of Bonin archipelago (including the infamous Iwo Jima, which is only 21km^2), is extensively fortified over many decades, has a significant population, is close enough to Taiwan to be under its umbrella, and is remote enough from the Mainland for it to be a significant factor.
It will be neutralized and eventually taken in case of a conflict(as will Taiwan itself), but the degree of this neutralization is up to execution(on both sides) and isn't a done deal. The archipelago is neither small nor it is insignificant.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
None of which is news to anyone nor does it change anything.
China has spent as long monitoring its development and planning its destruction as Taiwan has been fortifying it. And to be frank, fortifications are far less useful these days with bunker busters and precision munitions.
Even NK’s infamous mountain artillery bunkers are not expecting to survive the opening days of any war. But unlike the NK bunkers, fortifications on Penghu don’t have soft targets within range at the offset of hostilities for them to engage before their teeth are systematically pulled by the PLA.
Remember that Chinese drones won’t be limited to high altitude only like American drone missions. China has invested significantly in air deployable mini drones, including drone swarms; which can be launched by helicopter, missile or even other drones. These mini-drones can fly low to give close monitoring not possible from high altitude, and can even fly inside structures to verify kills. That’s where the small island nature comes into play. You are literally boxed in with very limited scope for movement, and everywhere you can go would have been pre-mapped by the PLA for destruction or close monitoring by drones.
Proximity to Taiwan will be largely meaningless and probably end up being a detriment since the same kind of systematic and overwhelming bombardment and kill verification will be visited on all military facilities and assets on the main island, so it would be able to offer little in the way of meaningful assistance. OTOH, close proximity to the main island, and clever psychops by the PLA added with relentless pressure from missile strikes and drone purges could prompt defenders to flee their posts if safe passage was offered.