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Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Stay tuned...and some links

Traveling this week.... enjoy some links.

EBAY FUN: A longtime reader alerted me (thanks!!) to this collection on ebay of stuff that purports to be war loot:

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Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

5 comments:

  1. You're pretty much right about those sub-hunting helicopters being unable to do much in a Chinese invasion scenario, due to Chinese air dominance. But even the USAF wouldn't be able to change that.

    USAF assets in Okinawa are insufficient to contest Chinese air superiority over the Taiwan strait, for the following reason: the Taiwan strait is beyond the "loiter radius" of any F-15s, F-16s, or F-22s. By loiter radius, I mean that the fighter jet has enough fuel to fly there, circle around for a meaningful amount of time, and then fly home, unrefueled. In order to loiter, the USAF will have to do mid-air refueling, but the USAF does not have sufficient tanker capacity to keep aloft anything beyond one or two squadrons at a time, which will likely be outnumbered nearly 20:1 by PLA air assets.

    The only way the US could contest air dominance would be if a carrier was parked close to the straits, which would obviate the need for anti-submarine helicopters anyhow (as a USN carrier battle group has more than enough anti-sub assets to lock down the strait if it chose to do so.) But carriers would be too slow to reach the straits in a crisis, and moving one to the straits in would paint the US as a clear aggressor in the international arena.

    One final thing to note is that the survivability of Taiwan air assets is very, very low--the air defense systems of the ROCAF can and will be penetrated by PLA missiles and bombers, and you can bet that most of those initial strikes will fall on airbases and radar installations. In fact, most DoD planners give Taiwan's airpower a 24-hour window of survivability, at most--with projected equipment destruction rates of nearly 30-50% in the first twelve hours alone.

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  2. I don't normally agree with much that Malcolm Fraser says but he seems pretty much on the money in that piece. It seems to be a decent analysis of the situation that makes fairly good sense, which is surprising as conservatives rarely make sense. I'm not sure what problem you have with it.

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  3. Damn, I was looking forward to your disemboweling of Fraser.

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  4. The only way the US could contest air dominance would be if a carrier was parked close to the straits, which would obviate the need for anti-submarine helicopters anyhow (as a USN carrier battle group has more than enough anti-sub assets to lock down the strait if it chose to do so.) But carriers would be too slow to reach the straits in a crisis, and moving one to the straits in would paint the US as a clear aggressor in the international arena.

    Excellent point.

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  5. I think the Fraser piece was unadulterated 'blame America'-style garbage, but I would not want to write a criticism of it since there is quite simply so much to criticise in it.

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