This marks the largest arms sale to Taiwan to date, though delivery of the shipment remains a long way off. The sale still poses a threat to China.
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PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
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This definitely poses threat to China with those 82 HIMARS and over 420 ATACMS and the 120 M109A7 and not mention this is the largest arm sale to Taiwan, after this they will have 111 HIMARS and 504 ATACMS what is a big amount and a threat to China..
When is the delivery?
Another reason for China to continue to ramp up its pace of missile production.
Ukraine proved those systems are vulnerable to drone and missile attacks, but if any of them survive, they pose significant threats to PLA ground forces.
The PLA and especially the PAARF's missile inventory needs to be vast and distributed enough to account for things like US-based cyber attacks, sabotage, and now counterfire as well.
Fortunately, the delivery times in the US are poor as always.
True, these shouldn’t be as much as big as an issue to China as they are to Russia given Taiwans size and the fact during war they can’t get any repairs or more systems, but still a threat to PLA forces and reportedly they will get 60 instead of 120 M109A7
Hopefully they will use these arms sales and inflated military budgets of Taiwan and Japan to boost their own defense budget to something respectable like 2%.
Current official budget of 246 billion USD is just 1.26%, which is embarrassing for a Superpower of China's caliber facing so many threats.
The only positive response for China's enemies like Japan and Taiwan boosting their military is to boost its own military.
When China can demonstrate overwhelming military power, then both Taiwan and Japan will slowly start to give up, and then they will likely reduce military spending as well.
China already demonstrates they are militarily superior to Taiwan and Japan yet both Taiwan and Japan increase their budget and weapon purchases so increasing the defense budget while needed, won’t make Taiwan or Japan back down.
Superiority is not enough to make your enemies give up, cause they think they can still win with grit and US support and more budget commitment. They still hope to convince US and the west to join in and save them. Right now China's superiority only makes them commit more into the military. They think spending more, sacrificing more is going to allow them to win.
What will make them give up is overwhelming dominance. A dominance so overwhelming that even if the entire west fights China, they will still lose guaranteed.
Currently, China's military budget is 10-15 times bigger than Taiwan, it should be 60 times bigger, similar to the difference in population. China's 5th gen fighter fleet should be bigger than US in the future. Its naval power should be much bigger than US. When China can achieve that level of power, there will be no doubt that even if US and a few Euro allies come with everything, Taiwan and Japan still will lose massively.
China should achieve the level of dominance where US intervention becomes a guranteed embarrasing defeat and likely loss of pacific islands for US and likely huge destruction on US mainland.
Essentially, China's population size should be matched by equal level of military might and total GDP levels. I think if China can achieve a GDP per capita of around 50K and also have around 2-3% GDP of military budget along the way, they can get that level of military dominance that will make Taiwan and Japan give up any illusion of fighting.
You are aware those don’t fit Chinas goals and if they do will happen in decades and I highly doubt increasing the military budget and GDP per captia will make Taiwan and Japan give up fighting, the best plan instead of US level dominance with zero chance any nation can stop China, the best option is to be dominant enough that the US decides not to intervene