A national security official under Joe Biden who reviewed the document is said to have turned pale on realising Beijing had “redundancy after redundancy” for “every trick we had up our sleeve”, The New York Times reported.
Last year, Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said that “we lose every time” in the Pentagon’s war games against China, and predicted the Asian country’s hypersonic missiles could destroy aircraft carriers within minutes.
An aircraft carrier was appropriate in its age - just like a tank was. But times have changed.
Regarding defense of Taiwan: it has to be mostly located on Taiwan, and has to be capable of taking out maybe 1000 vessels per day for 30 days, to defeat any hope of putting an occupying force on the island.
Lower capability may help achieve defense, but may not deter enough to avoid conflict.
Once the realization dawns that one will need (30 000 * factor of not arriving) guided weapons, so maybe around 100 000 guided weapons capable of taking out a vessel, the conclusion is obvious: if bad stuff happens, the Taiwanese will be using ground launched torpedos or maneuverable mines, and these will be literally made of “cheap IT supplies and plumbing components”, because that’s how you get quantity.
If the US gets involved, both sides will wreck each other’s capital ships, because those cannot be hidden.
I wonder what modern day relevant military super vehicle would be for the navy.
Submarines that can store a couple thousand attack drones? Emerge from hiding below the water and then a bunch of drones just take off to attack various ships and planes in the area?
Since seawater is radio opaque and visually not very transparent, a submarine meets 2/3 of the criteria of being invisible… which leaves sound and magnetic field (of which the latter is rather local).
So definitely a submarine, but how does it propel itself, and how does it avoid emitting and reflecting sound?
Or perhaps, no large crewed vessels at all, since it’s unpopular to lose them to sea drones made with garage level tech.
Perhaps the art of fighting is turning entirely towards small systems, ones that carry just enough to hurt the intended target type badly, and not a kilo more.
China itself seems to be learning lessons. One of their concepts is an unpiloted cargo plane to deploy a drone swarm. Applied to sea and to a situation of projecting power to distance - an uncrewed submarine to deploy a torpedo swarm. It wouldn’t return home, just deny a certain part of the sea to opponents. It could be slow, quiet and sleep at the bottom ahead of a conflict - and open up when needed.
We could always revisit the Philadelphia Experiment. 🤷♂️
This scenario reads towards an outcome that is more Manhattan Project than Philadelphia Experiment.