Another “eye-opening” Pentagon war game based on 2030 showed in 2020 that the US would not be able to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion and suffer “capital losses” with the PLA targeting Guam. US defence sources told The Times that every US base in the Indo-Pacific is at risk of a Chinese attack.
Taiwan is the “most volatile issue” between the two superpowers, Bonnie Glaser, director of the China power project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told The Times and warned that the problem could trigger a nuclear war.
In 2018 and 2020, two other war games showed the same results with China targeting Guam. The 2018 war game revealed that the US military will lose fast if it doesn’t change course considering the Chinese advancement in military technology and missiles.
“After the 2018 war game, I distinctly remember one of our gurus of war gaming standing in front of the Air Force secretary and chief of staff and telling them that we should never play this war game scenario [of a Chinese attack on Taiwan] again because we know what is going to happen,” Lieutenant General S Clinton Hinote, deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, United States Air Force (USAF), told Yahoo News in an exclusive interview in March 2021.
In the September 2020 war game, less than a year after the Covid-19 outbreak, China used biological weapons to attack US bases and warships in the Indo-Pacific and invaded Taiwan under cover of a military exercise like the Russian build-up ahead of the Ukraine invasion. The simulation ended with Chinese missiles hitting US bases and warships in the region and an aerial blitzkrieg and amphibious onslaught on Taiwan.
Besides, considering that the Quad is not a NATO-like military alliance in the region, China will not face a united front of European nations like Russia is facing in Ukraine. Except for the US, the other members of the Quad, especially India, will not be willing to assist Taiwan.
On 11 June, Vice-Admiral Biswajit Dasgupta, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command, made it clear at the Shangri-La Dialogue that the Quad is “not a military alliance” for India.
Besides, it will be difficult to supply arms and ammunition to Taiwan because of its geographical proximity to China as Beijing could easily target the consignments. According to USAF General Mike Holmes, “With Ukraine, you have borders that you can move things across. Taiwan’s a long way off.”
PLA Rocket Force
In case, the US intervenes militarily, China’s response will be a devastating pre-emptive attack in the first few days. “Many Chinese observers suggest that missile strikes on [US] air bases would be part of the opening salvos of a war,” RAND said in 2019.
China will unleash a volley of missiles — the most varied stockpile of 2,000 land-based, cruise and anti-ship weapons in the world — on Guam and Diego Garcia.
After the conclusion of the CNAS war game, which simulated China attacking Guam and Japan in the first few days, Hinote said that Beijing would adopt a Pearl Harbour-like bombing strategy. “The attack is designed to give Chinese forces the time they need to invade and present the world with a fait accompli,” he told the Air Force Magazine.
China has the most massive and diverse arsenal of missiles that threatens American ships in the Western Pacific, former US Indo-Pacific Command chief Admiral (retired) Harry Harris said in March 2018. “We are at a disadvantage with regard to China today in the sense that China has ground-based ballistic missiles that threaten our basing in the Western Pacific and our ships,” he said in a testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee.