Sink the PLAN and Give PLA Ground Forces a Dieppe Welcome
Holding Taipei is not the standard of victory
If the central front against China is Taiwan, is there a plan for the forces needed and the strategy to use them to achieve victory?
A war so close to the Chinese mainland would be a major challenge for the U.S. military because of China’s ability to deploy a large number of missiles, aircraft, ships, and other capabilities to the fight. It would also be difficult for China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, which would have to move massive amounts of troops, weapons, and materiel through an amphibious landing, air assault, airborne landings, or a combination of these means. The first troops to land would have to seize a foothold in Taiwanese territory before allowing follow-on PLA forces to flow into Taiwan. The United States would need to act within hours or days to prevent a territorial fait accompli, and it would need to be able to rapidly strike at the heart of the PLA’s invasion force, dislodging it from any territory it had gained. [emphasis added]
The author mentions Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), to spread out Navy long-range weapons in order to survive yet able to mass effort from the scattered locations. The Navy isn’t actually equipped to fully implement DMO, but the firepower is definitely there. And it could include Army and Marine ground elements operating on Taiwan.
For this firepower to work, Taiwan needs to hold the line and grip the PLA by the throat as distributed assets hammer the invasion flotilla and landing forces. Taiwan does seem to be working on that aspect:
Beijing has pursued a campaign designed not simply to intimidate but to erode Taiwan’s confidence and capacity to resist.
In response, Taiwan is undertaking a systemic effort to build its “whole-of-society defense resilience,” a comprehensive strategy that combines military preparedness with democratic cohesion, infrastructure hardening, and societal strength. The goal is to raise the costs of aggression to such a degree that no adversary can hope to achieve victory. Taiwan is making great strides in this approach, as seen in the July exercise.
This does address a problem I worry about.
While the author is correct that Taiwan isn’t necessarily going to be China’s target in a war, you can make an argument that a Taiwan scenario is the “pacing scenario” for building the capabilities to coordinate with an allied target, deploy to fight, and fight to win.
I’ve long felt that China could fling an army across the Taiwan Strait despite China’s lack of a sizable marine force and specialized amphibious warfare assets.
I wrote about one form of sea-based fire support for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It potentially—if analysts are correct about the vessel—could add air defense and ground support for Chinese troops on Taiwan. Along with more traditional naval vessels, this will reduce the transport needs of the initial invasion force.
That new fire support vessel might be a different form of the grains of sand that China can deposit on Taiwan from diverse assets to build a beachhead.
I know the debate is generally about whether America’s military is still superior to China’s, or not. But China doesn’t need to defeat America to win a war against Taiwan. China has to defeat Taiwan. China only needs to delay America long enough to defeat Taiwan. Unless China thinks America intervenes fast—or if China finds a first strike too tempting—that is.
Yet even a resilient country can get overrun and conquered by a superior military force. Especially when it lacks the territorial depth that has greatly aided Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion. Yes, Taiwan has a 100-mile moat that the PLA must overcome. But if DMO fails to cripple the invasion force before it lands, Taiwan needs the military power to defeat the PLA invasion on the ground, including the initial author’s advice of “dislodging it from any territory it has gained.” You can define defeating Taiwan as maintaining a bridgehead on Taiwan when the ceasefire is achieved. Subsequent round to follow.
So the Navy needs the ability to move and sustain U. S. Army heavy forces as the core of a ground force to make sure the Taiwanese can drive the PLA into the sea, notwithstanding the author’s rejection of tanks, saying they “will not be necessary for this fight.”
I addressed that Army aspect of denying China a foothold after a ceasefire in more depth in Military Review several years ago. One Forbes analyst called that warning to drive the PLA into the sea as the criteria for winning a “seminal assessment”. Yet I don’t really see that observation accounted for, including this more recent Foreign Affairs article that discusses what follows a failed Chinese invasion (implying the inability to carve out a bridgehead) but doesn’t address my framing of PLA success or failure.
But at least the initially cited author gets the problem. The end stage of a war over Taiwan must include driving the PLA invaders into the sea.
NOTE: I made the image with the Substack capability.