Pacific Command HQ
Joint Base Hickam Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
“Taiwan.”
“Say what?”
“The Red Team says that this is all about hawks who want to invade Taiwan. The war gives them the pretext to do that. Looks like a couple of corps level movements of the PLA along with some unusual shipping movements in one of their major ports. May be connected. Also, it looks like the Liaoning is finally coming out of refit. She may be planning to support an invasion. There would be no point in sending here down to the SCS just for us to sink her.”
The Admiral jumped up and started to pace. General Braverman had never seen the Admiral so animated. He was normally calm, cool and collected. Braverman wasn’t sure if he should be concerned or not.
“I assume they have evidence of this?”
“Yes, sir. Imagery of troops moving to ports, ships loading what looks like tanks, unusual comms traffic, posts on social media, etc..” Braverman held out a thick folder with “Top Secret” marked on the front.
While the US had always been concerned about an invasion of Taiwan from mainland China, there had been absolutely no indication to date that this was going to happen. Some analysts felt that China simply lacked the sealift for a forced landing, others were concerned that they would press commercial shipping into service if they could secure a harbor. Red team had been focused on this threat and been pouring over intelligence information looking for some indication that this was underway. Now, it looked like they had found something.
“Leave it, I’ll review later.” Finally, the Admiral sat down behind the large desk overlooking Pearl Harbor.
“What’s our status on Longsword?”
“Phase one complete. We have an incoming raid warning, they have launched allied aircraft to intercept the incoming raid.”
“And the THAAD battery?”
“Up and running.”
“What about the Patriots?”
“All four batteries are up and running.”
“There is no way the Chinese just chuck some missiles at us this time.”
“No sir.”
While the US
“Have all the F-35s arrived?”
“Yes sir, all six squadrons. The Italians came in last, but they are on station. We have them backed up by eight squadrons of F-16’s for an Alpha Bravo engagement. Plenty of spare parts and fuel have been landed by the Navy and we’ve got an air bridge set up with C-17’s from Japan. We were able to allocate the extra AIM-120D production to them so they are 100% armed with D models. We are ready.”
“Ready for what, that’s the question.”
An interesting twist! However, I really wonder why the Chinese would be thinking about invading Taiwan now – spreading themselves thinner and dealing with yet another adversary. Would that even be feasible with so much of their air and naval forces depleted from the battle with the US?
Actually, at this point, the PLA is very minimally engaged with the USA. The PLA alone is about 2 million personnel. The PLAN (Navy) is 240,000 personnel and the PLAAF (Air Force) is about 395,000. China is primarily a land power. Fighting a war with the USA in Taiwan would be much easier for them than duking it out with the Navy in the SCS. This assumes that the USA is even WILLING to defend Taiwan at this point.
The best case for China would be to lure the USA into a ground war. The thing that the US Army is MOST concerned about is a full-on invasion of Korea from China. This would be almost impossible to stop and explains why the Army has heavily reinforced Korea with armored units. It wouldn’t stop a Chinese invasion, but it would make the invasion painful. Because of this, US ground units are tied up in Korea and aren’t likely to be moved to Taiwan. Further, US Naval units are now fully engaged in the SCS and cannot simply abandon those gains to fight a war in Taiwan.
Also, it should be noted that countries rarely take action based on a purely rational basis. The USA invaded Iraq even though it was strategically stupid of us to do so, thus creating the very thing we were supposedly trying to prevent (a radical Islamic state within Iraq). Logically, Hitler should not have invaded Russia at least until the war with the UK was over. It turns out that bombing Pearl Harbor was a terrible idea for the Japanese, etc.. The list goes on and on.
China considers Taiwan a part of their country. Thus, moving troops in there to bring them back under government control would be no more a provocation than the USA sending troops to Texas to restore order there after civil strife or an insurrection. There are plenty of people in China who feel that they should have brought Taiwan under control years ago. This all ties into the Century of Humiliation when western powers basically controlled China. Their goal is to reunite their country and have sovereignty over what they legitimately feel is their country. In many ways, Taiwan is more of part of China than Hawaii is part of the USA. Similar to how we reacted to an attack on Hawaii to start WWII, China very much wants and feels they deserve to have Taiwan part of China again.
A blatant attack on Taiwan in a time of peace would probably cause more outrage globally than even China is prepared to accept. However, in a time of war, it could be justified as a defensive measure to prevent the USA from seizing the island and using it to attack mainland China.
If I’m not mistaken, Taiwan has quite a few older diesel submarines and a ton of torpedoes. Put them on the bottom of the Taiwan Strait and wait. Back them up with a few of the US Attack subs waiting on the bottom outside of the shallows. Since most of the PLA Navy is underwater, including most of her submarines, this should help a great deal.
As for the Chinese coming through North Korea, keep a watch on the build up along the river that separates the North Korea and Chinese sides. If there seems to be a problem there, then take out the bridges using stealth technology.
I think that the US would have pressed it’s stealth advantage a little more into mainland China in the initial phases of the war to include the B2 and especially after the hit on Guam. I also do not believe that the US would be fool hardy enough to put the Chuckie V in the SCS especially after the initial Kidd incident. The US is a little weary in real time when we are not at war to do it so i doubt they would do it in wartime. I also know for a fact that the US trains on keeping their refueling fleet very protected so I don’t think the Chinese would get to them as quickly as in the story. Plus I think the US would use more submarines in the SCS to shut down the water to all Chinese vessels or others headed to Chinese ports, which would stop all trade to include fuel, food and resupply to the islands and would shut down it’s economy fairly quickly.
All that said, I think this is a great story dude. Very good writing. Please keep them coming as I wait for baited breath for the next episodes.
Yes, fair points and thank you for the feedback.
I kept the USA out of China for a few reasons, most having to do with the storyline. There is also the concern of a nuclear exchange. To make the story work, the conflict has to stay contained and cannot go nuclear. In practice, the USA may be more aggressive than I portray here, hard to say and depends on the commanders and political leadership at the time. I chose to have the USA simply mine their harbors and cut off their trade. The war is only a few weeks old at this point so there have been limited impacts on the blockade so far, but I agree that in the long term China is in trouble if they don’t break the blockade.
You can’t really have US subs randomly sinking every ship in the SCS, so they don’t really help on blockade duty. However, they’ve been active throughout the conflict which I allude to but I don’t have this as a focus of any of the episodes. The USA has done a good job in reducing the surface fleet at this point and they are pretty much a non-factor. However, there is mixed evidence about Chinese subs so I decided to include them.
As for Taiwan and Korea, that storyline is still unfolding. We will see what happens there.