Originally Posted by
ORAC
Well that lesson from the UKR war didn’t take long to sink in. I presume they were buying some, but the number and speed of deployment seems very large and rapid.
Taiwan setting up 20-25 squadrons to operate shore-base anti-ship missiles
Taiwan is in the process of standing up between 20 to 25 squadrons in its navy to operate three types of anti-ship missiles.
Media reports in Taiwan say these units will be equipped with Hsiung Feng II, Hsiung Feng III, extended-range Hsiung Feng III, and Harpoon missiles in the future.
To support these units, new facilities such as ammunition depots, a driver training center, a maintenance center, and garages, will be built over the next few years.
The strategy will be to send these units to mountainous areas and tunnels during wartime to protect them against incoming attacks.
These squadrons are expected to be fully established by 2026.
If anyone can stand up to an aggressor effectively it would be Taiwan. They are fairly well prepared but were aiming towards symmetrical response which is a difficult proposition. They need to outthink rather than out supply chain the Chinese. Once the noise starts there is limited resupply capacity, so they need a very large ready reserve distributed across the island in all of the hideouts and bomb shelters. China can interdict resupply so that has to be on side. OTOH, China has the highest amount of debt of any country in the world, and it continues to get worse, the building bubble has been coming since 1995. Yes it arbitraged its way into the consumer market of the USA and Europe, but it has produced affluence of its domestic market through the effects of the property bubble, and that has started to show signs of imminent collapse. A fantastic time to alienate all of the rest of your customers, just like Basil Fawlty.
Taiwan has spent a lot on conventional defense forces, and they will not survive unscathed the first minutes of an attack, so the asymmetric means of fighting would seem to offer a better likelihood of a successful defense.
China has an economic and demographic problem, that may increase the potential of a bad day out. Much like Putin, but China also has an increasing potential to have a food shortage later this year, and if coupled with a financial bubble collapses, a distraction might look appealing which usually is regretted later.