Your assumptions are not really factually correct. I respect your posts in general but numbers matter in war time. Yes Islands are easy to defend if you have a superior navy and can prevent the attackers from landing.
But any attack would first take care of the infrastructure which would cripple the ability of the Taiwan Island's resistance. The rest would be swift dominance and massive numbers crushing any resistance.
Number is important, you just pick the wrong number to focus on.
Problem is that, you, along with many other, oversimplified battlefield by simply looking at number on both side.
The problem with number associated with combat support services, mainly logistic. It never matter the number of your fighter, ships, soldiers, tank or whatever equipment you had, but
HOW MANY YOU CAN SUPPORT IN THEATRE.
For argument sake, let's say that China have 1000 fighters and 2 millions troop, and 60 destroyers. Now, what you are saying is basically putting 2 assumption into equation.
1.) You assume China can destroy 100% of Taiwanese Defence Infrastructure
2.) You assume all Chinese Asset can operate in their AO with respect to Taiwan at any given time.
Now, for assumption 1. we all knew no country can destroy 100% of their infrastructure of an enemy in their pre-assault bombardment. In fact, most military analyst actually were against destroying enemy infrastructure to begin with, because by destroying enemy infrastructure, you not only hinder your enemy movement of reinforcement and supply, you also hinder your own breakout from the Initial AO.
Now, both effect must be equal, if you destroy enough infrastructure to hinder your enemy by 50%, you also destroy enough enemy infrastructure to hinder your own troop forward progress by 50%. Simply because Train station, port, airport will not rebuild overnight and for anything you destroyed, you will not have access to later.
For assumption 2. Just because China have 1000 fighter planes, that does not mean they can launch 1000 planes at the same time and service their AO at the same time.
As China in this case would be the aggressor, they would have to put pressure to Taiwanese defence and in this case, Taiwanese defence can be use as an reactionary role. Pretty much the same thing happen in Battle of Britain.
For China, it is no good to launch 1000 planes at the same time, because that would mean in any given day, you would have air support for the first 3 hours, then the fighter have to go back and refuel and rearm and come back and resume CAP. That mean you have 3 hours CAP, then nothing for 3 hours and then 3 hours CAP...
Problem is, for PLAAF to achieve air superiority, they would have to put up fighter and contest the sky with Taiwanese 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, which mean that they will have to divide their air asset in different shift. While shift 1 on station, you prepare to launch shift 2, and when shift 1 are low of gas and ammo, you put shift 2 on station and you pull shift 1 out. Now, that would halve the effective fighting power for China. And then you also need to consider stress put into the airframe, pilot, supporting personnel and eventually you are looking at a third or quarter of the 1000 fighter are used at any given time to contest the air superiority with the Taiwanese, which make up with not only fighters, but also ground base defence. And then you also have to know not all Chinese fighter are able to reach Taiwan, only those who are facing Taiwan can reach Taiwan, other fighter station in other airbases (like in Beijing or Tibet) simply cannot make the range and become irreverent.
The same deal goes with ships. Having any given number of ship does not mean they are and can use in all the AO. The Taiwanese does not need to engage a ship to ship combat, a pound to pound with Taiwanese Destroyer versus Chinese destroyer, all they need to target is transport ship. And this is something Chinese simply cannot hide them, as long as the Chinese need to land the troop in Taiwan to fight, they have to march the transport ship to Taiwanese coast.
Another problem is that it does not matter if China have 2 millions troop, how many they can support is all that matter. A typical best ratio is 50:50 (1 attack troop to 1 support troop) and then you have to also consider the lifting ability and supporting ability. It's nothing like some Chinese member here suggest that they can simply march 500,000 fishing boat to overwhelm the Taiwanese defence.......
Actually, there is no question that air superiority will be achieved before landing, you assumption of Chinese just send soldiers on boats is wrong.
How do you substantiate your claim?
And if Chinese soldier is not bunch into boat, how do you suppose you can transport them over the channel?
first wave of attack will be a mix of cruise missile, rockets, SRBMs, targeting infrastructure, command and control, runways, docks, SAM batteries.
Cruiser missile, Rocket and SRBM are point to point weapons, do you know how many road junction are there in Taiwan??
You cannot expect a total count with Missile, Rocket and SRBM. You can expect this to come thru, but you will be disappointed
PLAAF will then take care of whatever is already in the air. PLAN will have full control of the straight and conduct firepower preparations around the landing zones.
the only hope for Taiwan is to dig in inland, and preserve their forces.
Again, How?? Did Chinese fighter have some kind of magic missile that can shoot down any and every Taiwanese fighter that were airborne?
I mean Nationalism is good thing but it have to be match with Reality. All your "point" is what you believe or what you want to believe, just because you are saying it does not mean you can do it. And you have said nothing that can elaborate how you can achieve what you said here?
We are done here. A Chinese who have never served in the military and lives in the US pretty much declared logistics are irrelevant to the PLA.
He actually did better then I originally thought, I expected him to say something along the line with nuclear weapon actually...
