(05-29-2024, 03:22 AM)727Sky Wrote: One of the islands is 6 miles off the coast of Red China. I hope the S.F.'s bunkers are deep and reinforced... Also 100s if not thousands of shoulder fired missiles would be nice IMO.. When or if China tries to invade Taiwan I hope sincerely they get beat back in a BIG and total way !

(05-30-2024, 04:39 AM)Schmoe Wrote: Is this really anything new though?  I thought our special operations teams have long held joint exercises with their counterparts in Taiwan- Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, etc.

(05-30-2024, 06:47 AM)727Sky Wrote:

(05-30-2024, 04:39 AM)Schmoe Wrote: Is this really anything new though?  I thought our special operations teams have long held joint exercises with their counterparts in Taiwan- Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, etc.

True however there is a big difference between an exercise and troops being permanently based there.

That would be one duty station (6 miles off the Chinese coast) I would not want any part of... The world is going to keep screwing around and sooner or later there is going to be a world of hurt..One way to thin the herd I suppose ?

IMO China is wrong with their 9 dash line as is Russia with their invasion of Ukraine.


“The only solution for bad and violent people are good people that are more skilled in violence.” —— Japanese samurai code Bushido.

(05-31-2024, 02:51 AM)Schmoe Wrote:

(05-30-2024, 06:47 AM)727Sky Wrote:

(05-30-2024, 04:39 AM)Schmoe Wrote: Is this really anything new though?  I thought our special operations teams have long held joint exercises with their counterparts in Taiwan- Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, etc.

True however there is a big difference between an exercise and troops being permanently based there.

That would be one duty station (6 miles off the Chinese coast) I would not want any part of... The world is going to keep screwing around and sooner or later there is going to be a world of hurt..One way to thin the herd I suppose ?

IMO China is wrong with their 9 dash line as is Russia with their invasion of Ukraine.


“The only solution for bad and violent people are good people that are more skilled in violence.” —— Japanese samurai code Bushido.

Ha, yeah I'd want to pass on that assignment too.  I agree with China being wrong, same with Russia.  Why we can't as a species collectively live and let live, I don't understand.

Well, people like you and me want to live and let live, it's the psychotic, egomaniac leaders who keep trying to play warlord.  Then again, the world has gotten so corrupt that it probably couldn't function without that corruption.  Maybe the Bible actually is accurate, and a good old fashioned cleansing is required once the corruption reaches critical mass.

I guess war, unfortunately, made sense in the hunter gatherer days.  If you're all out of resources to sustain your people, you had to go elsewhere, and other people might be there who don't want you taking their resources.

Then war became about conquering and control, and even worse, religion.  Killing in the name of whatever god you prayed to, never fails to make me laugh, as sick as it is.

Putin apparently wants to bring back the glory of the Soviet Union, so what better way to accomplish that, than to invade sovereign nations and create loads of zealots after the ensuing war?

What does China gain by absorbing Taiwan?  A whole lot of zealots who will do whatever they can to harm China.  Or, they could go on being China, and let Taiwan be Taiwan, and nobody dies.

Quote:SINGAPORE — After meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the first time, China’s new defense minister paused in an outdoor hallway to wipe the fog off his glasses.

Standing near the press, Adm. Dong Jun smiled. And to a member of the American delegation, he described the best place in China, in his opinion, to go see pandas. It was diplomacy in action.

Two days later, Dong had a different tone.

He gave a stern, at times strident, speech on the last day of the Shangri-La Dialogue, a defense summit in Singapore that draws officials from across the region. Dong warned that those who support independence for Taiwan — a rogue province in the eyes of China’s leaders — will face “self-destruction.”

At another point, he said that the odds of “peaceful reunification” with the island nation are “eroding.”

These two points in time were representative of China’s goals for the summit — and by extension the reputation it may be seeking in the region. It appears China came to reassure other countries it is acting responsibly; after all, it did resume top military talks with the U.S..

But at the same time, it sent a message of enforcement — specifically regarding its interests in Taiwan and the South China Sea. After facing criticism from regional neighbors during the summit, Dong’s speech showed China’s hardened position on sensitive topics.


“That was the most consistently intimidating speech we’ve heard from China at a Shangri-La Dialogue,” Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at Australian National University, wrote on X.

‘Greater scrutiny’

A U.S. official agreed with the post, calling the speech “tone deaf.”

“Countries across the region and around the world continue to have serious concerns about coercive [Chinese] activities in the East and South China seas, in the Taiwan Strait, and beyond,” the official said on the condition of anonymity, due to the sensitivity of the topic.


The reference was to China’s military activities around the Second Thomas Shoal, a reef in the South China Sea on which the Philippines has an outpost. China and the Philippines are among several nations asserting sovereignty over local geographic features.

Chinese Coast Guard vessels have spent months harassing Philippine vessels during resupply missions — at times firing water cannons and disabling ships.

Two days before Dong spoke, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. warned he would consider the death of any Filipino due to such behavior an act of war. That decision could pull the U.S., which has a mutual defense treaty with Manila, into a conflict.


But Marcos wasn’t the only speaker with harsh words for China at the conference. Austin repeated Pentagon talking points that conflict isn’t “imminent or unavoidable.”

And Australia’s defense minister, Richard Marles, said: “As China steps up to a larger role, it must accept, like all great powers, that there will be much greater scrutiny on the way it uses its strength.”

Two years ago, after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., visited Taiwan, China ended military talks with the U.S. The break worried some attending last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, when China’s defense minister at the time had declined an offer to meet with American defense officials.

Those talks restarted after a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November, and Dong spoke at length about the value of communication during his remarks.

“The Chinese military never acts from the position of strength in his relations with foreign militaries,” Dong said. “At the same time, others should not expect to impose their will on us.”

Words and actions

But as one audience member pointed out to Dong during a Q&A session, those signals often don’t match China’s actions.

The week before the conference, China launched a series of military drills around Taiwan, responding to a speech from the island nation’s new president, who some in Beijing view as a pro-independence official. China labeled these exercises a “punishment.”

In his speech, Dong cited “external interfering forces,” a euphemism for the U.S. and other allied countries, for tension in the South China Sea and Taiwan.


After his speech, the minister wouldn’t address questions about China’s role in the Russia-Ukraine war nor the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. He did, however, speak for more than 10 minutes straight about those he claimed are seeking Taiwanese independence “incrementally.”

“They keep testing China’s red lines,” he said, referencing arms sales and “official engagements,” likely a reference to the members of Congress who recently visited the island.

When the moderator at the conference took several critical questions from the crowd, Dong tried a quick joke.

“I can feel the charm of the Shangri-La Dialogue,” he said.

Quote:SINGAPORE — President Xi Jinping has called on China’s People’s Liberation Army to be ready to take Taiwan by force by 2027. The United States, together with regional partners, must ensure a Chinese invasion can’t succeed. That plan hinges on quickly building and deploying thousands of new drones that would swarm the Taiwan Strait and keep China’s military busy until more help can arrive, according to the top U.S. military official in the Pacific. But time is running out to turn these plans into a reality.

Under its long-standing policy of “strategic ambiguity,” the United States has never committed to coming to Taiwan’s defense if China attacks. President Biden has repeatedly said he would send the U.S. military to defend Taiwan, although he added a new caveat in his latest interview with Time, saying, “It would depend on the circumstances.” President Donald Trump seems less likely to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf, having told a GOP senator while in office that if China attacks, “there isn’t a f------ thing we can do about it.”

For any U.S. president, to send American men and women to defend a small democracy on the other side of the world would be a very tough call. That’s why Plan A is to deter Xi from ever attempting an invasion, by making sure that he never looks across the Taiwan Strait and sees an easy victory, Adm. Samuel Paparo, the new head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told me in an interview.

“They want to offer the world a short, sharp war so that it is a fait accompli before the world can get their act together,” Paparo told me on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “My job is to ensure that between now and 2027 and beyond, the U.S. military and the allies are capable of prevailing.”

China’s likely strategy is to overwhelm Taiwan with a massive attack with little warning, Paparo said. Xi doesn’t want to repeat Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mistake in Ukraine in 2022, when Russia’s initial full-scale invasion failed and devolved into a long war of attrition.

The key to thwarting Xi’s assumed strategy is a U.S. strategy called “Hellscape,” Paparo told me. The idea is that as soon as China’s invasion fleet begins moving across the 100-mile waterway that separates China and Taiwan, the U.S. military would deploy thousands of unmanned submarines, unmanned surface ships and aerial drones to flood the area and give Taiwanese, U.S. and partner forces time to mount a full response.

“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” Paparo said. “So that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything."

“I can’t tell you what’s in it,” he replied when pressed about details. “But it’s real and it’s deliverable.”

There are some public signs the Hellscape plan is making progress. In March, the Defense Department announced it would spend $1 billion on a program called “Replicator” to build swarms of unmanned surface ships and aerial drones for this very mission. Paparo said the Replicator program shows that the United States is also learning lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, where Ukraine has innovated with drone technology.

The timeline for delivery of these systems is unclear. If the drone swarms aren’t ready when the attack comes, that could raise the prospects of a protracted conflict that would incur heavy losses for U.S. Naval and Air Force assets and would likely expand to include allies such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, according to most war game exercises conducted at U.S. think tanks.

Even if “Hellscape” comes together in time, drone swarms alone will not match Beijing’s massive military buildup on its side of the Strait. The PLA is expanding its nuclear, naval, air force, cyber, intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities at record speeds. According to Paparo, China’s military budget is likely three times what Beijing publicly claims, which would put it at about $700 billion annually. Meanwhile, Indo-Pacific Command’s budget is short $11 billion of what it needs this year alone, according to a letter sent to Congress in March by Paparo’s predecessor.

Financing the defense plan is not the only problem. The U.S. military currently has no reliable way to stop China’s hypersonic “carrier killer” cruise missiles. U.S. space assets are also vulnerable to Chinese attack. U.S. military deliveries to Taiwan are way behind schedule. Japanese officials told me the Biden administration is dragging its feet on Tokyo’s request to establish a new joint task force to help prepare for a conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea, where China is also getting more aggressive.

Also complicating planning is that a full-scale invasion isn’t Xi’s only option. China might stop short of attacking and simply blockade the island, as it seemed to practice last month after Taiwan inaugurated President Lai Ching-te, who is also referred to as William Lai. Beijing is also using economic coercion, political interference and disinformation to pressure the Taiwanese people into reunification and mess with their minds. Countering these threats falls outside of Indo-Pacific Command’s remit.

As a military official, Paparo has no official role in international diplomacy, but he does have strong opinions on what he calls China’s “revanchist, revisionist and expansionist” government. He believes that four decades of the West trying to convince China to liberalize politically has failed, giving way to a new, more dangerous era for Asia.

“The region has got two choices. The first is that they can submit, and as an end result give up some of their freedoms … or they can arm to the teeth,” he told me. “Both cases have direct implications to the security, the freedom and the well-being of the citizens of the United States of America.”

Paparo is right. Nobody thinks an arms race in Asia is an ideal outcome. But if Beijing insists on an arms race, the U.S. and its partners can’t afford to lose it. As George Washington said, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” Absent more action by Washington, Xi may soon conclude Taiwan is his for the taking.

The U.S. military plans a ‘Hellscape’ to deter China from attacking Taiwan