Posted on 08/13/2020 7:49:41 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Three American B-2 stealth bombers have arrived in the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia on the eve of Chinese live-firing naval exercises north of Taiwan.
It is the first time the nuclear-capable strategic bombers have been sent to the remote island since 2016, in an indication of the growing concern about China’s intentions towards Taiwan.
The bombers flew across the Pacific from Whiteman air force base in Missouri to land at Diego Garcia, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. With their advanced stealth technology, the B-2s can penetrate enemy territory without alerting air-defence radars.
This week just as major Chinese live-firing naval drills were being conducted north of Taiwan, the US flew three of B-2 stealth bombers to its Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean.
China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) held a series of multi-branch drills in the Taiwan Strait and northern areas this week. According to a PLA statement it's in response to external countries sending the “wrong” signals to Taiwan’s pro-independence forces - clearly directed at Washington given the high level American delegation currently visiting Taipei - which Beijing says is a threat to peace and stability.
Washington is sending its own counter-message in its stepped up presence in the Indo-Pacific, as The Times continues: "The bombers flew across the Pacific from Whiteman air force base in Missouri to land at Diego Garcia, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. With their advanced stealth technology, the B-2s can penetrate enemy territory without alerting air-defence radars."
This also comes days after New Zealand and Australian based defense sources accused the PLA of building up amphibious assault units along the coast just opposite Taiwan. Satellite images which circulated were presented as depicting additional marine amphibious craft activity near the self-ruled island.
(Excerpt) Read more at thetimes.co.uk ...
Sadly, this is a pretty clear bluff. The last thing on Earth we’ll ever do is send multi-billion dollar bombers into the heart of Chinese air defenses and start a war over Taiwan. If the Chinese decide to take Taiwan by force, it’s theirs. We MIGHT put some sanctions on them, but we for DAMN sure aren’t going to start world war 3 over it anymore than we did over Crimea in 2014 or the seized Georgian territories in 2008.
What we should be doing is moving all assets and manufacturing dependencies out of China so we can begin to cut economic ties with them. NO western business or government should have ANY dealings with China. We should sever all ties, fully embargo them, watch their economy collapse, and watch their people revolt against the Chinese Community Party and overthrow them. They’re liars, cheats, and thieves. They steal our secrets and our technology, they make crooked deals, and they lie to us about deadly viruses that then come here and kill hundreds of thousands of our people. We should NOT be doing business with these people!
It’d be hard for China to take Taiwan even without our intervention. They don’t have the amphibious capability and Taiwan has a good army.
All we have to do is sink their ships and they can’t take the country.
If they chose to fight an air war, then they’ve chosen poorly. Their air force won’t survive.
The only way China would take Taiwan is without Trump as President and an acquiescent Democrat in power.
If the Chinese take Taiwan, their first strike will be a barrage of missile and artillery fire that will wipe out every defense and military base in Taiwan with absolutely zero regard for collateral damage. The Chinese don’t care about people. They’ll kill millions if it gets them what they want. They’ve got a billion more where those came from, and they think DECADES in advance.
You seem to think we have some all-powerful military that can simply stop all attacks in place. The fact is, China would take Taiwan in under 24 hours. We have no response to that. In a long, entrenched fight, we can eventually beat back the Chinese. Will we spend $10 - $20 Trillion and 500,000 American lives to defend Taiwan? Will we risk a nuclear response to defend Taiwan? No and no. Never gonna happen. When it comes to China and Russia, we just don’t care THAT much about these little guys.
While driving through the CA central valley, wifey & I once saw a B-2 banking overhead.
Damn, that thing was big.
Americans and the rest of the world will have spent a year of our lives cowered in our homes because the Chinese Communist Party decided to wage war against Hong Kong and Taiwan and eventually South Korea.
Sure, right now we’re just trying to save our damned necks. But when this is over how many of us will be slapped awake to the fact that socialism and socialists did this to us deliberately?
An accurate analysis of the situation. China’s bluff is that they have so very many men they can afford to lose. Cannon fodder. That has some merit in a land assault.
An amphibious assault is a completely different thing altogether. Especially when it is known and expected. The CCP would be the victims of a shooting gallery in those waters.
Precision munitions raining down on their assault fleet would minimize if not eliminate that threat.
We and the Taiwanese would quickly establish Air Superiority. The CCP would try to attack our naval assets with hypersonic anti-ship missiles but, even were they to succeed in damaging or sinking a couple of naval assets they can’t sink DG or Guam. Or, CUBI Pt.
Their failure would be humiliating. And, in their culture that level of humiliation is completely unacceptable. Ritual suicide is common for failures far below this level of humiliation.
Of course, if they resort to insane levels of desperation they could nuke Taiwan. That would be the ultimate FU to Taiwan and the USA. Knowing full well the USA would never engage in a nuclear war for Taiwan.
Let’s pray the CCP is very far from that level of desperation.
There is no artillery that can hit Taiwan from China.
China does not have the ability to project force across the strait if even one big navy joins Taiwan...whether the US or Japan.
US fighters can reach Taiwan from carriers, Okinawa and the PI. Our heavy bombers could saturate the skies with anti-ship missiles.
Remember, our weapon systems work...first time, every time.
So it would be an air-sea battle and no way China prevails. No need to strike the mainland.
Of course Taiwan may be a smoldering ruin afterward.
Don't even begin to allow anyone to think that the US thinks that is the case because it simply is not. It will be a bloody mess for the Chinese. Obama had led the Chinese to believe that Taiwan was outside our nuclear defense perimeter. Trump has been sending a very different message.
**Of course Taiwan may be a smoldering ruin afterward.**
Presumably so would Beijing.
I thought Guam was set up as a forward operating base for the B-2?
Did the Brits attack Buenos Aries during the Falklands war? It would sent the locals a message-serious. gotta do it.
Um, no, our systems don’t work first time every time. The vaunted anti-torpedo torpedo systems that were being put on carriers have been removed because they don’t work.
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Well, I dunno.
If Russia came crashing through the Fulda gap there would almost certainly be a US military response. Likewise South Korea.
The US has alliance with the Republic of China, therefore it is a policy issue which depends on whether being an ally means anything or not.
real world hard crunch, but Xi won’t go there with this administration.
The Chinese have H/PJ-38 130mm, Type 76, and Type 210 ship mounted artillery to augment the massive first strike of missiles that would slam into Taiwan’s defenses and bases in the first hours. Expect Chinese military personnel to appear out of the woodwork on the island to sabotage any infrastructure they don’t want to wipe out with weapons systems and aid in the landing of additional troops.
They’d have thousands of boots on the ground ready to go before the first shot was fired and they’d have tens of thousands on the ground within hours. And China’s been churning out an interdiction fleet for well over a decade that our admirals have been desperately trying to warn Congress about, yet still their funding hasn’t been sufficient to maintain the level of dominance we expect. If we start shooting at Chinese military assets, we WILL lose ships. And not just a few.
Frankly, Taiwan isn’t worth it for us. Why should we lose trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of troops when - by your own admission - the end result would be a smoldering wasteland devoid of life? We cannot protect Taiwan. If we wanted to do that, we’d have the island occupied, fully decked out with US military hardware operated by US troops, and completely surrounded and monitored 24/7 with enforced no-fly and no-sail zones. But we don’t have all that.
They’ve definitely been stored there before. F-22s as well, I’m pretty sure. Both require strictly regulated environmental controls to keep the skin of those aircraft from degrading rapidly due to all the secret stealth stuff going on. There’s only a handful of places on Earth they can spend any significant time. Otherwise, I think the B-2s would be coming out of Missouri. That’s a long flight time for those beasts.
I agree with you that Xi won’t go there with this administration. President Trump is crafty enough to hurt China in all sorts of ways that don’t require blunt military force. And he already doesn’t particularly like them (RIGHTFULLY SO!)
But in the future? Who knows. I certainly wouldn’t want to live in Taiwan when President Trump leaves office in about 4.5 years.
We’ve had 2 or 3 carrier groups at a time over there on several occasions during the past 20 years, when China threatened Taiwan. Those aren’t sent to bluff, and they’re more powerful than most people realize.
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