Think Tank War Game Shows Difficulties of Defending Taiwan from Chinese Invasion

People definitely need to get out of their minds that a war with China in defense of Taiwan will be anything like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Thousands could die in a single strike on a U.S. aircraft carrier or other ships and that is what this war game is demonstrating:

Leaders assigned to 2nd Cavalry Regiment conduct a multinational war gaming meeting involving leaders from the United Kingdom, Hungary and the Netherlands during a planning phase while participating in Allied Spirit I at Hohenfels Training Area located in Germany, Jan. 20, 2015. (Army)

The game umpires include two doctoral students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a former Marine captain and Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist with MIT’s Center for International Studies and author of five books and numerous articles on China’s military power. Overseeing the project is Mark Cancian, a CSIS senior advisor and retired Marine colonel.

Some variants had Japan involved from the start. The Philippines allowed U.S. basing in some iterations, but not others. Game moderators permitted U.S. strikes on mainland China in some, but not others.

Throughout the week the game always reaches a stopping point where the players know the likely outcome and, nearly always within the roughly three-week timeframe of simulated combat, it reaches a stalemate on Taiwan between U.S. and Chinese ground forces. (……)

On the first U.S. turn, the players lost an entire aircraft carrier, though it was on the board from the “baseline” opening and not that team’s choice to have it where it was located. In a version earlier in the week, the United States lost 700 aircraft over the three-week battle.

None of these provided a pretty outcome, but in each of the versions, the United States prevailed, Cancian said.

Army Times

You can read more at the link, but these war games are showing the U.S. can win in the near term such conflict at great cost, however 10 years from now would that still be the case?

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ChickenHead
ChickenHead
2 years ago

“None of these provided a pretty outcome, but in each of the versions, the United States prevailed, Cancian said.”

Outstanding! America won every time!

Good thing the Chinese don’t possess force multipliers like pronoun awareness and action plans for dismantling the systemic white patriarchy.

Who knows what silly wargames they diddled with to show America can win every time.

The reality is the moment this kicks off, every major American warship within thousands of kilometers is going to have a Chinese cruise missiles slotted for it… and as that missile gets close, the solid rocket booster will kick in and give the gift of hypersonics at the waterline.

They might even know that… as few of those 700 superior American planes were shot down with inferior Chinese missiles.

Hint: they went down with the ship

And the few in the air ran out of fuel before they got to a place to land.

Who knows how they fantasized about how America prevailed in the end.

Maybe they challenged the Chinese to a checkers game after the largest search and rescue operation in global history.

No. China can be beaten… but not by fighting old-timey war on Chinese turf.

Hope they have a real plan.

Actually, they likely do.

…same thing they have done as China has oozed outwards… taking over islands, controlling critical infrastructure, buying farmland, stealing secrets.

Nothing. America will do nothing.

setnaffa
setnaffa
2 years ago

Was it true that during a war game in preparation for Midway, the Japanese simulated a US carrier ambush?

No, they did not.

A bit of backstory of the battle:

The operation at Midway was intended to draw out and destroy the US (operational) carrier force of 3 carriers: Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet. The Japanese brtought their mobile strike force (Kido Butai), made up of 4 carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu); they were bringing in an invasion fleet as well, but the island itself was a secondary objective. The island would be very hard to actually hold.

Back to the question: The Japanese war-gamed the battle itself (which would be their 4 carriers vs the American 3 carriers and the 180 or so aircraft stationed on Midway Atoll), but, after their string of easy victories against the US in previous campaigns, they fully expected to win with ease. Thus, although the officer playing as the US side in the Japanese war-game attempted to place the US carriers in an advantageous position, he was not allowed to do so. The referee claimed the US did not have the fighting spirit for such an operation. (Later in the battle, the referee also vetoed the sinking of 2 Japanese carriers by a lucky US airstrike, which certainly implies the degree to which the Japanese expected everything to go as planned.)

Thus, although an ambush was attempted by the “US” player in the war-game, his attempt was foiled by the overconfident Japanese referee.

Note: the entire Japanese force was overconfident and expected an easy victory. This was the #1 factor contributing to their loss.

https://propnturret.com/tully/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4256

The-Battle-of-Midway.jpg
setnaffa
setnaffa
2 years ago

BTW, speaking of not doing anything, the Chinese have already declared war on all the fish in the sea…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H7k8yNr0ns

setnaffa
setnaffa
2 years ago

In other US Navy news, the USS Milwaukee is still just off Humboldt Bay. The H-3 was saved and survived to be scrapped in 1930.

The men responsible were never tried or punished for the loss of a valuable ship. Because of course they weren’t.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Milwaukee_(C-21)

USS Milwaukee (CL-21) in 2019.jpg
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