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Obviously what the west is lacking is Gunjitsu.
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# ? Aug 10, 2022 23:56 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 06:25 |
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psydude posted:It's tough because China has about a week from the start of hostilities to completely dominate Taiwan before the US and its allies can muster an effective defense. A week is extremely fast… The US is not magic, and sprinting in to fight in someone’s immediate sphere is hard.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 00:10 |
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A.o.D. posted:It was about a month ago that there was a video that came out of Ukraine that was exactly that. It was a class teaching how to fit a mortar round onto an RPG-7. It looked almost exactly like nearly every Thursday training day class I'd ever participated in. Yeah I was pretty surprised how familiar that scene felt.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 00:16 |
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CRUSTY MINGE posted:I remember that account too, but I don't recall exactly where or when I heard it. It's one of the things that pops into my mind when I think about China starting a war anywhere. psydude posted:I've worked extensively with the Japanese and been to Japan a bunch. One common thread has been that they absolutely hate the Chinese. Particularly because they buy up all of the Japanese whiskey.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 00:18 |
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CommieGIR posted:Obviously what the west is lacking is Gunjitsu. That's okay, we have gunkata. Someone get the stage director for Equilibrium on the line.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 00:56 |
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mlmp08 posted:A week is extremely fast… The US is not magic, and sprinting in to fight in someone’s immediate sphere is hard. Odds on China being able to completely covertly stage for an invasion? I think the assumption that they catch everyone completely flat-footed here is doing a lot of work.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 01:03 |
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Diarrhea Elemental posted:Odds on China being able to completely covertly stage for an invasion? I think the assumption that they catch everyone completely flat-footed here is doing a lot of work. You can't hide that kind of invasion fleet, at best you can misdirect where or when it's going, but an invasion force of a size sufficient to invade Taiwan is likely to be something on the scale of Normandy if they're serious about winning.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 01:06 |
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The Russians weren't able to hide the build-up to the Ukraine invasion, and the PRC wasn't able to hide the troop build-up at the coast in advance of pelosis visit to China. Both were obvious from open source intel, like people putting videos on tiktok showing military convoys. Edit: in the PRC's case the public intimidation was probably the entire point, but the general point stands. In the era of smartphones it's very unlikely you'll be able to hide large troop movements and buildups, not without turning off the internet. Dance Officer fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Aug 11, 2022 |
# ? Aug 11, 2022 01:21 |
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Diarrhea Elemental posted:Odds on China being able to completely covertly stage for an invasion? I think the assumption that they catch everyone completely flat-footed here is doing a lot of work. Also after Ukraine I think leaders are going to pay attention if (say) the US Director of National Intelligence comes to your country and hand-delivers proof you're going to be invaded and urges you to disperse your forces and prepare for war. The next democracy isn't going to be surprised when the missiles start hitting.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 01:45 |
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All Taiwan needs to do is - behind closed doors, of course - tell the US and Europe that "if China invades and you leave us in the lurch, we'll not only burn down the chip fabs ourselves, we'll figure out how to light the ashes on fire as well."
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 01:52 |
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Diarrhea Elemental posted:Odds on China being able to completely covertly stage for an invasion? I think the assumption that they catch everyone completely flat-footed here is doing a lot of work. What are all of these container ships doing in my port, here in my hometown of Seattle?
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 03:14 |
pantslesswithwolves posted:What are all of these container ships doing in my port, here in my hometown of Seattle? World in Conflict was massively underrated.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 03:23 |
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Diarrhea Elemental posted:Odds on China being able to completely covertly stage for an invasion? I think the assumption that they catch everyone completely flat-footed here is doing a lot of work. It is both true that if China wanted to actually for real militarily take over versus Taiwan that preparations would be plenty detectable and also that the US couldn't muster a solid defense in a week. This is part of why the plan is never to wait til China is ready to go, then suddenly go "LET'S GOOO" and race in there. Who knows how it would play out in reality, but it's not like flying in the 82d airborne riflemen dudes when there's a small crisis or just moving a fleet.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 03:27 |
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Jimmy Smuts posted:Yeah, it was so odd experiencing that firsthand when I was stationed there despite hearing about it before. The Japanese would be so nice & polite about everything, but mention China, and they'd just straight up say that they hate them. One of the "fun" parts of East Asia is everyone hates everyone else and the concept "racism is bad" hasn't really arrived yet, so people will just tell you in great detail about how they think all Koreans are subhuman scum and the entire country should be leveled with nukes or whatever. Not great.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 03:30 |
We have tik tok's now going through how to operate captured Russian tanks. Its a good sign for maintenance and training mindest.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 03:35 |
Grand Fromage posted:One of the "fun" parts of East Asia is everyone hates everyone else and the concept "racism is bad" hasn't really arrived yet, so people will just tell you in great detail about how they think all Koreans are subhuman scum and the entire country should be leveled with nukes or whatever. Not great. The potential loss of Kpop music videos makes this an unacceptable trade to their neighbors within the decade, mark my words.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 03:37 |
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mlmp08 posted:It is both true that if China wanted to actually for real militarily take over versus Taiwan that preparations would be plenty detectable and also that the US couldn't muster a solid defense in a week. This is part of why the plan is never to wait til China is ready to go, then suddenly go "LET'S GOOO" and race in there. Who knows how it would play out in reality, but it's not like flying in the 82d airborne riflemen dudes when there's a small crisis or just moving a fleet. Yeah that's pretty much exactly what I was implying. This day and age you're not pulling off planning and executing D-Day 2.0 without literally everyone on the planet knowing exactly what you're doing, with more than enough time to wind up a counter.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 03:41 |
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Diarrhea Elemental posted:Yeah that's pretty much exactly what I was implying. This day and age you're not pulling off planning and executing D-Day 2.0 without literally everyone on the planet knowing exactly what you're doing, with more than enough time to wind up a counter. D-Day 1.0 was well known to German high command. What was obfuscated was the exact date and intended target. In the case of Taiwan, since there is no declared war, and since it really doesn't matter where China targets, the opportunity for misdirection is more limited, although not to be discounted.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 03:54 |
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BIG HEADLINE posted:All Taiwan needs to do is - behind closed doors, of course - tell the US and Europe that "if China invades and you leave us in the lurch, we'll not only burn down the chip fabs ourselves, we'll figure out how to light the ashes on fire as well." That's the motivation right there.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 03:58 |
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BIG HEADLINE posted:All Taiwan needs to do is - behind closed doors, of course - tell the US and Europe that "if China invades and you leave us in the lurch, we'll not only burn down the chip fabs ourselves, we'll figure out how to light the ashes on fire as well." Non-soldier here: Isn't this kind of what we (America) would want if they did invade (assuming the invasion couldn't be feasibly repelled)? The global chip trade is getting seriously disrupted anyways if any sort of protracted fighting occurs on the island of Taiwan, so wouldn't it be better if their main strategic asset was denied to China? America has the technology to replicate their fabs (and would presumably be able to offer generous asylum to skilled Taiwanese engineers), whereas from what I've read Chinese chip fabrication tech is still behind Taiwan/America.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 05:49 |
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There would be a massive shortage that would take years for replacement fabs to be running to replace the fabs of taiwan. Semiconductor fabs take a bunch of money and time.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 05:53 |
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ChaseSP posted:There would be a massive shortage that would take years for replacement fabs to be running to replace the fabs of taiwan. Semiconductor fabs take a bunch of money and time. The rest of the world would cheerfully pay whoever controls those fabs to get access to their products even if they killed every person on the island to seize them.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 05:57 |
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ChaseSP posted:There would be a massive shortage that would take years for replacement fabs to be running to replace the fabs of taiwan. Semiconductor fabs take a bunch of money and time. Oh yeah, I'm aware fabs require years and 10s of billions of dollars to spin up. Is the scenario not 1) medium-term disruption in supply, with China now having access and control of top-quality chips or 2) longer-term disruption to supply, with America retaining more of an advantage in tech? Chip supply is going to be messed up in an invasion scenario, unless the US-aligned world completely acquiesces to the invasion. I guess we'll see if significant economic pain can/will be born by western societies.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 06:00 |
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mlmp08 posted:It is both true that if China wanted to actually for real militarily take over versus Taiwan that preparations would be plenty detectable and also that the US couldn't muster a solid defense in a week. This is part of why the plan is never to wait til China is ready to go, then suddenly go "LET'S GOOO" and race in there. Who knows how it would play out in reality, but it's not like flying in the 82d airborne riflemen dudes when there's a small crisis or just moving a fleet. I've gotta imagine there's enough persistent naval and air combat power in the region to start messing up the PRCs day well in advance of an entire MEF being assembled and ready to perform Incheon 2.0.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 06:43 |
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There were apparently 3 carrier groups near Taiwan when Pelosi was visiting (though off hand I can only find 2 that were directly near Taiwan Ronal Reagan Group and USS Tripoli) E: USS America up by Japan Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Aug 11, 2022 |
# ? Aug 11, 2022 06:48 |
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psydude posted:I've worked extensively with the Japanese and been to Japan a bunch. One common thread has been that they absolutely hate the Chinese. Particularly because they buy up all of the Japanese whiskey. Even the crappy version of Suntory they sell at PF Chang’s is really loving good.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 06:52 |
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Here's a fantastic article about the mobilization of Ukrainian civil society in Odessa. It's a good, uplifting read for your Thursday morning. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/ukraine-volunteer-army-russia-odesa/671088/
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 08:45 |
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mlmp08 posted:It is both true that if China wanted to actually for real militarily take over versus Taiwan that preparations would be plenty detectable and also that the US couldn't muster a solid defense in a week. This is part of why the plan is never to wait til China is ready to go, then suddenly go "LET'S GOOO" and race in there. Who knows how it would play out in reality, but it's not like flying in the 82d airborne riflemen dudes when there's a small crisis or just moving a fleet. I typed up a big long thing that I decided not to post, but the summary is that the US Navy is both able and willing to stop a PRC invasion of Taiwan. The PLAN could probably deal with 7th fleet, but they can't both deal with 7th fleet and subdue Taiwan in the time it would take the rest of the US Navy to show up and close the Straights of Taiwan.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 11:23 |
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psydude posted:Here's a fantastic article about the mobilization of Ukrainian civil society in Odessa. It's a good, uplifting read for your Thursday morning. That was very interesting, thanks for sharing.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 12:37 |
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Here’s a good article about chip manufacturing: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/...&smid=url-share
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 13:43 |
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psydude posted:Here's a fantastic article about the mobilization of Ukrainian civil society in Odessa. It's a good, uplifting read for your Thursday morning. Yeah, that's good stuff.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 13:51 |
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DJ_Mindboggler posted:America has the technology to replicate their fabs (and would presumably be able to offer generous asylum to skilled Taiwanese engineers), whereas from what I've read Chinese chip fabrication tech is still behind Taiwan/America. There is a whole ecosystem around chip fabrication and packaging that is centralized in Taiwan. It would be a massive disruption even if they managed to get the key people and technical documents out ahead of an invasion. Rebuilding the hundreds of billions of dollars of various facilities would take some serious time and although the US does have the ability to build to those standards it’s not like anyone can do it so there will be a severe shortage of teams that can execute adding years to any rebuild. In an industry that currently sees 18 months to 2 years as the pace for new technology introduction. TSMC and their support companies are ahead of the US in capabilities in some areas so for the very high end stuff that would really be a big problem. It’s not like you can just take a part designed for a TSMC process and just make it at an Intel plant instead. There is a huge amount of work that goes into adapting designs to a specific fabs processes and some things just couldn’t be adapted without significant compromises in redesign. It’s taken a couple of years, I think I started mentioning plans to bring fabs back to the US 3 or so years ago in the air power thread but it’s actually happening now so that’s may help reduce the strain in political dealings in the SCS quite a bit. Or, at least shift the context of those discussions.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 14:40 |
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Murgos posted:There is a whole ecosystem around chip fabrication and packaging that is centralized in Taiwan. It would be a massive disruption even if they managed to get the key people and technical documents out ahead of an invasion. Rebuilding the hundreds of billions of dollars of various facilities would take some serious time and although the US does have the ability to build to those standards it’s not like anyone can do it so there will be a severe shortage of teams that can execute adding years to any rebuild. In an industry that currently sees 18 months to 2 years as the pace for new technology introduction. Not to mention the equipment for chip making is all custom built one offs by companies in Europe and it takes years of lead time to get even one machine and fabrication line completed.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 14:44 |
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Quackles posted:So... nukes? China has a no first use policy when it comes to Nukes and the U.S reserves the right to use them but has no real interest in hitting the spicy button. Which is why its assumed any conflict would play out conventionally. Someone correct me if im wrong here.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 15:31 |
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Sentinel posted:China has a no first use policy when it comes to Nukes and the U.S reserves the right to use them but has no real interest in hitting the spicy button. That is the assumption I hold and have seen in general. There are many people who like to "what if" scenarios, a subgroup always goes the nuke route. I believe that seriously considering a nuclear exchange in most cases is borderline fantasy/paranoia. No one wants to kick off the potential destruction of the planet, especially since the land they want is part of the planet...
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 15:44 |
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I also think any conflict between the US and Australia with China over Taiwan would be strictly regional. I don't see either side trying to attack strategic targets in the others' territory, other than maybe minor incursions into the mainland to disable stuff like SRBMs.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 15:54 |
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I'm not sure why Russia and/or China thought they'd be allowed to invade peaceful democracies with no consequences. They do know that "appeasement" is a completely dead strategy in western politics, right? Nobody, absolutely nobody, wants to go down as the next Neville Chamberlain. And voting publics have had it drilled into their heads that you can't just give dictators what they want, they'll just want more. The world is starting to look like 1939 where you have heavily armed autocratic countries trying to gobble up their smaller neighbors with flimsy justifications of shared language or history. The whole "oh they're just going to seize country X before the rest of the world can do anything" has been tried before. They saw what happened to the last E: forgot iraq/kuwait
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 15:57 |
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Uncle Enzo posted:I'm not sure why Russia and/or China thought they'd be allowed to invade peaceful democracies with no consequences. I still really like Obama, but it's becoming apparent that his refusal to take a more forceful stand in Crimea and Syria set us on the course we're on now. And I really can't blame him, since the US had burned up its internal and international political capital in Iraq. But this is still the end result we have now.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 16:03 |
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Sentinel posted:China has a no first use policy when it comes to Nukes and the U.S reserves the right to use them but has no real interest in hitting the spicy button. I may be a stupid optimist but I do also think if there were a war it would remain conventional. China doesn't have all that many nukes, they didn't want to spend that kind of money so just maintain a couple hundred as a don't gently caress with us policy. Conquering and destroying the PRC isn't a realistic possibility so without that existential threat, I think the bombs stay in their silos. North Korea is the country I'd be most concerned about using them. Not as a first strike, they're not that stupid, but if major war were to come again I don't see why they wouldn't.
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 16:08 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 06:25 |
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Uncle Enzo posted:I'm not sure why Russia and/or China thought they'd be allowed to invade peaceful democracies with no consequences. Well, Russia's already done it twice recently without any real consequences, right?
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# ? Aug 11, 2022 16:09 |