At a time when China's Taiwan Strait issue is becoming increasingly acute, both China and the United States have tacitly acquiesced that the two sides will fight over the Taiwan Strait issue.
But when to hit? How to fight? Both sides had different things in mind.
In this regard, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a well-known think tank organization in the United States, conducted a war game as early as 2023 to discuss how to defeat the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
U.S. tactics to strike at China's homeland
In CSIS's wargames, there is a very core idea, that is, to attack the military industrial capacity and industrial production capacity of Chinese mainland.
Therefore, in the war games, the process of the US military attacking Chinese mainland is basically to first use missiles to disintegrate the military capabilities of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, and then bombers to attack China's coastal areas, especially the economic core of the Pearl River Delta.
Then there are bombers that go deep into the interior and strike at the core industrial areas, led by the northeast region, and completely destroy China's military and industrial production capacity.
This process is correct in terms of thinking, for an industrial power like China, if it wants to completely destroy China's war capability, it is indeed necessary to destroy China's industrial capacity first.
But the problem is that the United States can't do it, which makes the process proposed by CSIS a bit like "open the refrigerator, stuff the elephant in the refrigerator, and close the refrigerator" in three steps.
The first step in the U.S. process is to use missiles to destroy China's military forces, including the navy, land-based anti-ship missiles, and air bases.
American tactics are not available
But with the current military structure and military strength of China and the United States, it is estimated that no one can figure out how the United States can do such a thing.
The United States can only use missiles to strike these important military targets against China, and there are only two ways to achieve it, which are nothing more than ship-based and the first island chain.
The U.S. military launched ship-borne missiles
Strikes are carried out on the Chinese mainland through carrier-based missiles, or by taking off carrier-based aircraft from aircraft carriers and then using carrier-based aircraft to carry missiles.
But the problem behind this tactic is that China has a large number of anti-ship ballistic missiles on its own soil.
At present, China has DF-26 anti-ship missiles in its hands, with a maximum range of 4,500 kilometers. The strike radius of US carrier-based missiles or carrier-based aircraft will not exceed 1,500 kilometers at most.
In other words, the US aircraft carrier battle group has been included in the strike radius by the DF-26 before it can hit the Chinese mainland.
By that time, the US aircraft carrier battle group had already sunk before it had even launched missiles.
As for attacking the Chinese mainland through the first island chain, this plan is more feasible than attacking China by sea power.
The air power of the United States on the first island chain
First, these military forces are close enough to Chinese mainland.
At present, the United States has begun to deploy Tomahawk missiles in Japan and Typhon missile systems in the Philippines, both of which are military forces capable of striking China's homeland.
Second, the United States has deployed air forces in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, and other countries.
After carrying missiles, these armed forces are indeed capable of quickly reaching China's periphery and launching military strikes against China's mainland.
But both of the above situations face their own problems.
The biggest problem with the U.S. missile systems deployed in Japan and the Philippines is that there are too few missiles and that it is difficult to reach the Chinese mainland quickly.
Typhon missile system
The United States plans to deploy 400 Tomahawk missiles in Japan, half of which can hit China. 200 missiles is indeed a lot, but compared to the number of missiles at the disposal of China, an industrial country, these missiles are still not enough.
As for the Philippines, there are only more than 10 missiles deployed on its own territory that can hit the Chinese mainland.
And these missiles have a big problem, that is, slow speed. The United States does not yet have hypersonic missiles, and even its ballistic missile technology is relatively backward compared with China, Russia, and even North Korea and Iran.
Today, the missiles in the hands of the United States are basically cruise missiles, and the same is true of the missiles deployed in Japan and the Philippines. The biggest problem with cruise missiles is their slow speed.
Tomahawk cruise missiles
The maximum speed of the U.S. Tomahawk missile is only Mach 0.9, and the Typhon missile system in the Philippines also uses the Tomahawk missile. The medium-range missiles deployed by the United States in the Philippines need to fly for 1.5 to 3 hours to hit China.
As for the Tomahawk missiles deployed in Japan, if they want to hit China, they will need to fly for no less than 20 minutes.
However, China's ballistic missiles have a speed of Mach 2 to 3 at the slowest speed, and the DF-17 hypersonic missile in its hand can reach Mach 10 at the fastest.
Therefore, if China and the United States set off a "missile war," and the United States has not yet launched half of its missiles, China's missiles have already bombed the US military forces deployed in Japan and the Philippines several times.
Launch Tomahawk cruise missiles
As for the US Air Force's tactics of taking off from the first island chain and then launching missiles from warplanes to attack the Chinese mainland, the success rate is not high.
China's own air defense system is quite dense, and China has a large number of advanced fighters that can intercept these American fighters.
It is not difficult for us to find that if the United States wants to attack China, it will not be able to do it in the first step, and the tactics that follow will naturally be nonsense.
Carpet bombing by American bombers
The advantage of the United States is getting smaller and smaller
When the Cold War ended and the United States began to gradually form a competitive relationship with China, the sooner the United States wanted to attack China militarily, the better.
After all, after the Cold War, China began to invest a lot of resources in military construction, and after that, China's military power became stronger year by year.
And throughout the post-Cold War era, 1996 was a dividing line. Prior to this, China's military resources had not yielded results, and after 1996, China's military industry slowly produced modernization results.
Therefore, before 1996, if the United States wanted to launch an all-out war against China, it was possible to win, but after winning, most of them would have only half a life left.
Before 1996, China was seriously lacking in anti-ship forces
But since 1996, the U.S. military advantage over China has been declining.
At present, although the United States is stronger than China in military strength on the surface, in fact, with the current military potential of China and the United States, the United States can no longer defeat China.
With the current overall national strength of China and the United States, China and the United States really want to go to war in an all-out way, and after this war is fought, China will have half a life left.
And over time, what little military stock the United States has left will slowly disappear.
American fleet
There is a saying about the current pace of military development between China and the United States, "I am waiting for more aircraft carriers and destroyers to be launched, what are you waiting for"?
Resources:
[1] Straight News "Zhang Sinan: The United States Deploys "Typhon" in the Philippines, One Bad and One Stupid"
[2] China Daily, "The U.S. and Japanese Defense Ministers Unanimously Agree that Japan Will Introduce American-made "Tomahawk" Missiles in 2025