[quote=“Interlocutor”]
On that subject, are there no jets in preparedness on bases in South Korea or Japan or even Guam, all a short flight away?[/quote]
Not a short flight away for fighters and AWACS. The US will avoid stationing squadrons on Taiwan at all costs; it is just too politically sensitive. Our airforce assets in Japan, S Korea and Guam would have to tank in order to get into and out of theatre. That means that their time and numbers on station when doing CAPs would be kept pretty low, possibly too low to maintain air superiority.
No, but considering that if we only use distant AF assets for air defense the numbers in the air may not be great enough to maintain air superiority and go after the enemy’s ability to wage war. Carrierborne aircraft will be right on the seen. The carriers will almost surely be put on station right behind Taiwan; USN and ROCAF E2s will be in the air at all times for early warning and each carrier would have jets on standby for intercepts. You can’t really do that with jets based in Okinawa or S Korea.
Almost certainly.
Yes, but there is a strong chance that they will do a lot of things by special ops. They will probably do something like land a 747 from HK or Macau full of bad guys at CKS. They’ll also have plenty of goons ready to assassinate government types in order to create panic and confusion. With their missiles, they can at least create plenty of fear, and if they really go all out with them, they will probably manage to take out a couple of airbases. It will not be something like D-day in 1944. They are not going to use a bunch of landing craft. The US would see that coming weeks in advance.
That’s correct. I’ve read speculation in the Chinese media that one reason Beijing protested US action in Iraq in 2003 was because they knew once the US invaded Iraq, that would free up one or two carrier groups that could respond to a situation in the Taiwan area. The US Navy has been tied down by Southern Watch for over a decade, but now the carriers are on the loose for bluewater operations. Beijing obviously does not like that.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. The ROCAF does not have very strong offensive capabilities. The US has always been afraid of selling air to ground weapons to Taiwan. Taiwan has developed some pretty good anti-ship missiles and has played around with air-to-ground cruise missiles, but they don’t really have anything operational for the latter. They could give China’s navy trouble, but they have no cruise missiles for attacking the mainland. Taiwan’s figher pilots spend most of their time training for air to air, and they are supposedly pretty good at that. All this talk about SU-27s being better than the F-16 or Mirage is just plain bullshit. Sure, in 1v1 and all other things equal (which they are not, ROC pilots get about 5 times the flight hours per year as what PRC pilots get), an SU-27 is superior to Taiwan’s fighters. Fortunately for Taiwan, though, the PRC has no AWACS whatsoever. Taiwan on the other hand is quite well developed in its use of the E2 Hawkeye. PRC fighters will have a very difficult time penetrating.
Unless they’ve been keeping a lot of their training program secret, the only thing ROC pilots can do air to ground wise is drop dumb bombs. That just won’t cut it if they want to go after the mainland’s assets.
I think the reason we are seeing this two weeks one month stuff is that the US is trying to tell Taipei: “Yes, if there is an unprovoked attack we will come and help you, but you lazy fucks better get ready to pull your own weight.” I think that’s pretty fair. Overpriced or not, the package of goodies the US has offered Taiwan is quite necessary.
I think Flipper was more expressing disbelief the US would ‘take’ that long as opposed to having zero knowledge of the logistics issues.
Ms. Voice of Reason arrives on the scene 
