What is the result of the US think tank’s ‘Taiwan Invasion’ War Game?

“U.S. and Japan block Chinese forces, but huge losses such as losing two aircraft carriers”… South Korea needs to increase missile power

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a US think tank, released a shocking report from the beginning of the year. The report contained a scenario for Taiwan’s defense against the Chinese invasion. It is the result of simulating how a military clash between China and the US-Japan coalition that attacked Taiwan would unfold. The results of the war game conducted by CSIS can be summarized in one word: “No matter how the war develops, China will lose, but the United States and Japan will also suffer tremendous damage.”

There are three main scenarios that emerged as a result of the war game. Scenario 1 is the most likely aspect of the battle between China and the US-Japan allied forces. As a result of the war game, China lost 155 fighters and 138 warships. It is a fairly large loss, but considering the size of China’s Navy and Air Force and the current power expansion project, it is sufficiently tolerable. Meanwhile, the results showed that the United States and Japan lost 449 fighters and 43 battleships. Considering the size of the US forces deployed in the Indo-Pacific and the size of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, it is truly devastating damage. In Scenario 2, which is somewhat favorable to China, the result was that the US and Japan would lose 646 fighter jets and 28 combat ships. Even in scenario 3, which was somewhat favorable to the US and Japan, the conclusion was drawn that both the US and Japan would lose 290 fighter jets and 24 warships. In either scenario, both sides of the US and Japan would suffer enormous losses. In particular, as a result of the three war games, a scenario in which “two US aircraft carriers were sunk” came out. The US military leadership, as well as military experts around the world, were in considerable shock.

When the results of this war game were made public, criticism towards the Joe Biden administration surged in the United States. Initially, Taiwan planned to build up its military power in preparation for an invasion of China. The framework consists of long-range strike missiles and air defense missiles and the expansion of land and sea platforms to operate them. The Biden administration has opposed Taiwan’s plan to build such a military force. It was an instruction to secure a large quantity of infantry portable anti-tank weapons and short-range surface-to-air missiles instead of mid- to large-sized combat ships and long-range missiles, referring to Ukraine’s war against Russia. Just like Ukraine, which lured Russian troops deep into its territory, Taiwan is also asking China to engage in guerrilla warfare and attrition warfare in case of emergency. In response, CSIS criticized the Biden administration’s Taiwan defense plan, saying, “The Ukrainian model cannot be applied to Taiwan.” In fact, in this war game, there was no situation in which the Chinese army went into a melee due to the deep inland invasion of Taiwan. Although it is a simulation result, unlike the Biden administration’s policy, it turns out that Ukraine and Taiwan are completely different battlefields.

Still, the United States has a military power that overwhelms China in all aspects of hardware and software. With the right budget and policies, it has the potential to widen the power gap with China beyond decades. Although China has invested heavily in military expansion over the past 10 to 20 years, its military power is not strengthened simply by building a few warships and a few fighter jets. In order to win a war, national leadership must have a perfect strategy by mastering the knowledge of their own and the enemy’s forces. Based on this, it is necessary to have high insight on what weapons to acquire and how to fuse with existing forces. Above all, the front-line units, which can be called the hands and feet of military power, must move in perfect order according to the command’s intention. In that sense, building a military force requires real-world experience and decades of training and research. The United States is a country that has all of these backgrounds. If the U.S. starts building its military power a little more aggressively, China will not even dare to stand up against it. It may collapse on its own in an excessive arms race to catch up with the US military power.

The variable is the recent security policy of the United States and Western European countries. As pointed out by the US diplomatic magazine Foreign Policy, the recent European Union (EU) and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) member states have begun to seek Korean weapons because of their distrust of traditional military powers such as Germany and France. Germany and France have been pro-Russian since the so-called “Merkozy” (a term referring to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy). In the meantime, the military power of the two countries has been drastically weakened. The level of military power and military industry of the two countries, which once boasted world-class status, has fallen into abyss.

In the United States, military readiness seems to have weakened significantly since the Barack Obama administration. After the global financial crisis, the Obama administration significantly reduced spending by retaining the so-called “sequester” (automatic federal budget cuts). During the 2013-2021 fiscal year alone, $1.2 trillion (about 1,506 trillion won) of budget cuts were cut, 41% of which was the defense budget. As a result, regular depot maintenance of major US aircraft carriers and submarines has been canceled or postponed indefinitely. Most of the missile and ammunition purchase budgets were also cut. At this time when the US military power was rapidly weakening, China increased its military power explosively. The same is true of the Biden administration, which applied a knife to massive cuts to the defense budget.

Currently, the U.S. military is pursuing a plan to build a military force against China to prevent China from advancing into the Pacific and invading Taiwan. Most of them were established when former President Donald Trump came to power. The Trump administration has strengthened the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system to prevent massive damage to fighter jets and warships in a military conflict with China in case of emergency. Accordingly, a wide-area missile defense system was established throughout Northeast Asia. At this time, the US military also conceived an anti-access/area denial strategy to strike Chinese warships from a distance and prevent them from moving in the Taiwan Strait and East China Sea. The improvement of public power in the United States is being carried out in all directions. △Next-generation destroyer DDG(X) program △Improvement of hypersonic missile response capabilities of Arleigh Burke-class Aegis destroyers △Establishment of Navy and Marine Corps Expeditionary Vessel Interdiction System (NMESIS Nemesis) △Air Force’Rapid Dragon: stealth air-to-ground A typical example is the air-to-ship missile delivery capability grant) program.

The new long-range anti-ship missile (LRASM) of the United States. [록히드마틴 제공]

The core of the Trump administration’s containment of Chinese military power is strengthening its missile capabilities. At the time, the U.S. military envisioned a plan for an all-out war with China as follows. First of all, at the beginning of the war, a defense line linking Taiwan, Okinawa, Japan, and Kyushu, Japan will be established to block China’s concentrated ballistic missile offensive with the Aegis BMD system and the ground-based MD system. It plans to launch long-range stealth anti-ship missiles from warships and ground-launch platforms deployed in large numbers along the defense line to sink all Chinese warships at a distance of 500 to 900 km. It is a simple tactic at first glance, but at the time, China had no suitable plan to respond to this. Accordingly, the US military planned to introduce a large number of interceptor missiles such as the SM-3 and SM-6 to block China’s ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons. Mass procurement of stealth anti-ship missiles to intercept Chinese warships from a distance, Norwegian stealth anti-ship missiles (NSM)/Joint Strike Missile (JSM), and long-range anti-ship missiles (LRASM) were also promoted. While China was struggling, a regime change occurred in the United States. The U.S. is facing difficulties as the direction of U.S. military readiness has changed drastically with the change of president. A platform to build a Chinese defense line is being secured, but the missiles to be operated on the platform are in short supply.

The U.S. Air Force announced in 2019 that the joint long-range air-to-surface missile (JASSM) series of missiles and LRASM mass production targets were 10,000 and 410, respectively. The following year, as the US Air Force introduced the Rapid Dragon system, which uses transport aircraft as missile launch platforms, the procurement of JASSM and LRASM was expected to increase further. However, after the administration was changed from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, the large missile procurement plan was completely readjusted. The additional procurement plan has virtually collapsed. The United States plans to complete the introduction of missiles by procuring only 400 LRASMs through a total of 19 rounds (lots, production units) contracts by 2025. Regarding the 400 LRASMs to be introduced by the US military, CSIS evaluated it as “only a week’s supply” in this report. In real battles, where the situation changes faster than in war games, the consumption of firepower is bound to increase. Military experts predict that in an actual full-scale war, 400 LRASMs will be consumed in three to three days.

As mentioned earlier, the United States is developing and deploying platforms such as the Nemesis and the Rapid Dragon that pour out a large amount of missiles. Nemesis is a platform that fires 2 to 4 anti-ship missiles based on a small tactical vehicle. Procurement of hundreds of units is planned. Rapid Dragon is also designed to launch 45 missiles based on C-17 transport aircraft and 12 missiles based on C-130 transport aircraft. If only a few platforms are deployed, hundreds of missiles will disappear in the blink of an eye. No matter how many stealth missiles these platforms launch, they cannot break through China’s dense multi-level air defense network and hit all of them. China has more than 40 large air defense destroyers equipped with the ‘Chinese version of Aegis’ system. There are more than 50 battleships over 4,000 tons equipped with an air defense system comparable to that of Aegis. Considering China’s new-style corvettes and missile high-speed boats, it cannot be 100% sunk even if the US pours in all its anti-ship missiles. Given this, CSIS recommended that the US military acquire large quantities of missiles capable of attacking Chinese warships at long range.

China’s ‘aircraft carrier killer’ anti-ship missile Dongfeng-21D. [뉴시스]

There is one thing to point out here. This is the productivity problem of the US defense industry that was revealed in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war. Like Europe, the United States has continued to reduce military spending since the end of the Cold War. In particular, during the Obama administration, budgets for missile and ammunition development and production, which require a lot of cost, were greatly reduced. Major U.S. missile producers such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies have also significantly reduced their facilities. After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the US defense industry has been expanding production lines, but it is mostly focused on infantry missiles such as the Javelin and Stinger. As a result, it is estimated that the US’s ability to produce anti-ship missiles such as LRASM and NSM is less than 100 each per year. Japan’s recent declaration of mass production, saying, “We will be equipped with 1,000 long-range missiles in the future,” is also a move that takes into consideration the lack of missile inventory and deteriorating production capacity in the United States.

In recent years, China has been increasing its naval and air forces at an explosive pace. The Biden administration must respond to demands from the United States and its allies to increase armaments and expand missile capabilities. The weakening of the US missile power will inevitably lead to great disasters in the camp of liberal democracy. If, by any chance, China underestimates the US missile power and invades Taiwan, the damage to the US-Japan allied forces and Taiwanese forces will increase exponentially. As Japan announces plans for mass procurement of missiles and prepares for the worst, South Korea, which has declared strengthening cooperation between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan, must not sit idle. It is time for the South Korean military to secure a large amount of missile power and reorganize its naval and air forces.

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Weekly Donga

Published in issue 1376>

Shin In-kyun, CEO of Self-Defense Network

Source: Donga

Mark

Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.