Wargaming Taiwan, Part Two: Issues and Implications
By definition, there is always more than one tree in the forest.
idiom
US
: to not understand or appreciate a larger situation, problem, etc., because one is considering only a few parts of it.
First, it is important to understand the purpose of those who created and played this wargame. Let’s refresh our memories:
At the other extreme, if no amount of U.S. assistance can save Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, then the United States should not mount a quixotic effort to defend the island. However, if U.S. intervention can thwart an invasion under certain conditions and by relying on certain key capabilities, then U.S. policy should be shaped accordingly. In this way, China would also be more likely to be deterred from an invasion in the first place. However, such shaping of U.S. strategy requires policymakers to have a shared understanding of the problem.
Yet, there is no rigorous, open-source analysis of the operational dynamics and outcomes of an invasion despite its critical nature. Previous unclassified analyses either focus on one aspect of an invasion, are not rigorously structured, or do not focus on military operations. Classified wargames are not transparent to the public. Without a suitable analysis, public debate will remain unanchored.
Therefore, this CSIS project designed a wargame using historical data and operations research to model a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan in 2026.
While this might seem a reasonably straightforward statement of intent, it is a bit slipperier than the reader might realize at first glance. This model is, according to the authors, designed to provide both policymakers and the public with an anchor for debate. But what is the debate about?
It boils down to whether we should, or should not, make war on the People’s Republic of China in the event it launches an amphibious invasion of Taiwan. And I think this is an excellent debate to have. It would have been a wonderful thing to have had such a debate within the public sphere as well as among policy makers on the similar question of whether we should have made war on the Russian Federation if it launched an invasion of the Ukraine to protect the seceding Donbass republics and eliminate what it viewed as an existential threat on its own border. But we did not have that debate. Instead, we had an all-hands-on-deck media and governmental assault on any who advised caution and risk assessment, labeling them as everything from “Putin-bots” to traitors.
Even more unfortunate, we can see a similar response set beginning to take shape around the question of making Fifth Generation war, (propaganda, subversion, economic warfare, lawfare, kinetic warfare, etc.) on China (and not just over Taiwan), where any voices that advocate we make damned sure we know what we are doing, and understand the wider implications and potentially unanticipated consequences of our actions, are coming to be labeled as “Commie dupes,” and, of course, that all-purpose slur, traitors.
As a general rule of debate, making arguments that consist almost entirely of ad hominem assaults does not bode well for the logical cohesiveness of your position. At any rate, the first question we need to ask is, “Does this wargame accomplish what it says it wants to accomplish? Does it give policymakers and the general public an anchor from which to debate the issue of a US military response to a PRC invasion of Taiwan?
I would have to say that the answer is yes, but it is a very qualified yes. I believe the authors understand this, since they note, “However, if U.S. intervention can thwart an invasion under certain conditions and by relying on certain key capabilities, then U.S. policy should be shaped accordingly.”
The key caveat here is the word certain. It implies limits and constraints on the scenario, and, indeed, it turns out there are several such which the authors then proceed to list.
First, the conditions for success:
Taiwanese forces must hold the line.
There is no “Ukraine model” for Taiwan. (China can interdict after the fact efforts to arm Taiwan against the invaders).
The United States must be able to use its bases in Japan for combat operations.
The United States must be able to strike the Chinese fleet rapidly and en masse from outside the Chinese defensive zone.
I would add what I think is a quite crucial fifth condition, explicitly stated but not emphasized: This conflict is wargamed for the year 2026, four years in the future. The authors state:
The game is based on capabilities that the countries involved have demonstrated or have concrete plans to field. Players often had imaginative initiatives for cyber, special operations, and new systems, but the game did not include these unless the relevant country had demonstrated those capabilities. The relatively near time horizon of the game (2026) limits how many new capabilities might be fielded.
This is critical due to the murkiness surrounding the actual capabilities of current PRC weapons systems, especially the most modern of them. China is one of the two great powers known to have tested and deployed hypersonic missile technology. Russia has a suite of 5 or 6, depending on how they are counted. China has at least two, and likely more. For the purposes of this discussion the following combination is one of the most dangerous for U.S. aims in any confrontation with the PRC over Taiwan.
Launched in 2017, these 13,000-ton stealth guided-missile destroyers are considered by many to be the most powerful surface combatants in the world.
The Type 055, big enough to be considered a cruiser by NATO standards, is equipped with 112 vertical launch tubes that can used to fire everything from anti-ship missiles to long-range land-attack missiles.
“This ship in particular has a sophisticated design, stealth features, radars, and a large missile inventory. It is larger and more powerful than most US, Japanese, and South Korean destroyers,” RAND Corp. senior analyst Timothy Heath told CNN in 2018, when Beijing launched two of the warships in a single day – a testament to China’s impressive shipbuilding capabilities.
In fact, it is larger and more powerful than any US, Japanese, or South Korean destroyers. (The practically defunct Zumwalt class destroyers are no longer competitive in terms of power dynamics). Now match it up with China’s recently announced (and possibly deployed) YJ-21 hypersonic “carrier killer” missiles, called the “Eagle Strike 21” by the PLAN. China is not being at all subtle about its intentions.
An article in the South China Morning Post from April, 2022 says that China has "commissioned” five of these vessels. However, a Congressional Research Service report dated December of 2022 states:
A total of six were reportedly in service as of August 2022. In August 2020, it was reported that the seventh was delivered to the navy in May 2020, and that the eighth was launched on August 30, 2020, and “will complete the first group of Type 055 destroyers.” DOD states that the fourth was commissioned in December 2021 and that “the remaining four” would likely be commissioned during 2022. A January 2022 press report stated that in addition to the first eight ships, at least two more are under construction.
Whatever contradictions there might be between the two reports I’ve cited, it seems a fairly safe bet to assume that the PLAN will have all eight ships commissioned (a somewhat iffy term when speaking of Chinese warships, whose commissioning is often not announced publicly) by the date projected for the conflict gamed here. That would mean the PLAN could float at minimum 896 vertical launch tubes, many of which might contain these hypersonic “one shot, one kill” carrier killers. This fact would bear directly on one of the primary assumptions for a US “victory” in defeating a PRC invasion of Taiwan: The United States must be able to strike the Chinese fleet rapidly and en masse from outside the Chinese defensive zone. Ships like the Type 055, and hypersonic missiles like the YJ-21, if deployed in bulk in the PRC’s Order Of Battle, could go a long way toward preventing the USN from achieving that goal.
On Pyrrhic Victory
This type of victory is given at least a nod in the CSIS discussion.
Avoiding a Pyrrhic Victory
Victory is not everything. The United States might win a pyrrhic victory, suffering more in the long run than the “defeated” Chinese. Furthermore, the perception of high costs might undermine deterrence: if China believes that the United States would be unwilling to bear the high costs of defending Taiwan, then China might risk an invasion. The United States should therefore institute policies and programs to make winning less costly in the event of conflict. Such measures would include:
POLITICS AND STRATEGY
▪ Clarify war plan assumptions. There is a seeming gap between war plans, which assume prewar deployments to Taiwan and neutral countries, and political realities.
▪ Do not plan on striking the mainland. The National Command Authority might withhold permission because of the grave risks of escalation with a nuclear power.
▪ Recognize the need to continue operations in the face of heavy casualties. In three weeks, the United States will suffer about half as many casualties as it did in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
▪ Move Taiwanese air and naval forces toward asymmetry. Despite rhetoric about adopting a “porcupine strategy,” Taiwan still spends most of its defense budget on expensive ships and aircraft that China will quickly destroy.
Another way of saying that Taiwan has its own military-industrial complex to feed, possibly at the expensive of effective procurement and production strategy.
DOCTRINE AND POSTURE
▪ Fortify and expand air bases in Japan and Guam. Dispersion and hardening dilute the effects of missile attacks.
▪ Revise U.S. Air Force doctrine and restructure procurement to increase aircraft survivability on the ground. Ninety percent of aircraft losses occurred on the ground.
▪ Do not plan on overflying the Chinese mainland. Chinese air defense is too strong, the targets take a long time to produce operational results, and the air missions around Taiwan take priority.
▪ Recognize the limitations of Marine Littoral Regiments and Army Multi-Domain Task Forces and cap their numbers. These units are designed to counter China and do provide some value, but political and operational difficulties put limits on their utility.
There is a reason that the US littoral combat ship program is considered one of the most notable failures of the modern military era.
▪ Avoid crisis deployments that create vulnerabilities. Military doctrine calls for forward deployments to enhance deterrence during a crisis, but these forces make tempting targets.
WEAPONS AND PLATFORMS
▪ Shift to smaller, more survivable ships and develop rescue mechanisms to deal with crippled ships and multiple sinkings. Surface ships are extremely vulnerable, with the United States typically losing two carriers and 10 to 20 large surface combatants in game iterations.
▪ Prioritize submarines and other undersea platforms. Submarines were able to enter the Chinese defensive zone and wreak havoc with the Chinese fleet, but numbers were inadequate.
▪ Continue development and fielding of hypersonic weapons but recognize that they are niche weapons. Their high cost limits inventories, so they lack the volume needed to counter the immense numbers of Chinese air and naval platforms.
▪ Prioritize sustainment of the bomber fleet over fighters. The range, missile standoff distance, and high carrying capacity of bombers presented the People’s Liberation Army with daunting challenges.
▪ Produce more, cheaper fighters and balance the acquisition of stealth aircraft with production of non-stealth aircraft. With so many aircraft lost early in the conflict, the Air Force risks running out of fighter/attack aircraft and becoming a secondary player in the conflict unless it has a large enough force to sustain the losses.
First, the notion that hypersonic missiles are “niche weapons.” That may be true for the US, whose military procurement processes have become so bloated, rife with corruption, and plagued with terrible management that just about everything created through them becomes, first, hideously expensive, over time and over budget, and second, of much less effectiveness that anticipated.
Examples:
The F-35 fighter jet program.
Defense News reported on Wednesday that defense contractor Pratt & Whitney is suspending its deliveries of new F-35 engines, following a setback on a Texas runway last month. Video from the December 15 incident shows a Lockheed F-35B Lightning II crashing during a quality check and the pilot ejecting.
Last Friday, in the aftermath of the incident, Defense News first reported that Lockheed Martin had “announced it halted acceptance flights and deliveries of new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters” due to the ongoing investigation. As a result, Lockheed Martin delivered seven fewer aircraft than the 148 that they were contracted to deliver in 2022. According to that report, “A source familiar with the program told Defense News the investigation into the Dec. 15 mishap found that a tube used to transfer high-pressure fuel in the fighter’s F135 engine, made by Pratt & Whitney, had failed.”
Pratt & Whitney, which is a subsidiary of Raytheon, and earlier in December received a $115 million contract from the Department of Defense for an F135 engine enhancement program, told Defense News that they would not comment since an investigation into the crash was ongoing.
Problems relating to the F-35’s engines are nothing new. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from April 2022 revealed that Pratt & Whitney delivered only six of 152 F-35 engines on time in 2021, “primarily due to quality issues that required resolution before engines could be accepted by the government.” And yet, through last year, Congress continued to fund the F-35 beyond the Pentagon’s requests. As Nick Cleveland-Stout noted in RS last year, the FY 2020 Defense Appropriations Act allocated funds for 22 more F-35s than DoD had asked for.
The F-35 aircraft additionally has been mired in other major problems. Dan Grazier wrote for RS in March that a non-public 2021 Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation testing report “showed that engineers are still trying to correct 845 design flaws. Their challenge is compounded by the fact that new problems are discovered almost as fast as the known flaws are fixed.”
Beyond consistent quality issues, the F-35 is also among the most expensive Pentagon programs ever. As a letter signed by a transpartisan group of organizations — including the Quincy Institute — last summer exclaimed, “Over the service life of the fleet, the F-35 program is projected to cost the American people $1.7 trillion. This is roughly $5,000 for every man, woman, and child in the nation.”
In the more than 20 years since Lockheed Martin won the competition to develop the F-35, more than $62.5 billion has been spent on the program’s research and development, according to Grazier. “Despite all that time and resources, the F-35 remains an underdeveloped aircraft,” he writes, “it will still take years to complete the design during a process program officials have dubbed ‘modernization’ but is really a second chance to finish work that should have been completed during the initial development effort.”
The latest mishap involving these engines caused the F-35 Joint Program Office to pause deliveries on December 27, and to ground a number of F-35s. It is unclear at this time how many aircraft were grounded or how long the groundings will last.
At this point, about 800 of the F-35s are “in service.” What that may actually mean can vary on an almost daily basis.
Littoral Combat Ships.
On 18 June 2021, Naval News reported that, in a report to Congress, the Navy planned to inactivate Fort Worth, Coronado, Detroit and Little Rock in Fiscal Year 2022 and put them on the Out of Commission in Reserve (OCIR) list.[172] In the final budget Congress forbade the Navy from retiring the three Freedom class ships in Fiscal Year 2022.[173] By May 2022, the Navy shifted its plans to decommission nine LCS warships in Fiscal Year 2023, citing their ineffective anti-submarine warfare system, their inability to perform any of the Navy's missions, constant breakdowns, and structural failures in high-stress areas of the ships.[174]
“Inability to perform any of the Navy’s missions.” That’s quite an indictment.
The Zumwalt Class destroyer.
The Zumwalt-Class Destroyer Fell Short of Expectations – The United States Navy’s Zumwalt-class destroyer was billed as the future of naval warfare. Designed to incorporate brand new stealth technology, and brand-new weapons systems, the Zumwalt was to replace the aging Arleigh Burke-class. Initially, the Navy was scheduled to procure 32 Zumwalts. But the program went rampantly overbudget while the new ship performed below expectations. The Navy withdrew support, asking Congress to stop procuring Zumwalts and instead build more of the familiar, reliable Arleigh Burke destroyers. Congress obliged and only three Zumwalts were ever delivered.
At a final cost of about $8 billion a copy - approximately eight times the cost of China’s equally powerful (or perhaps more powerful) Type 055 destroyers. And the Chinese ships actually work.
To adequately provide Naval Surface Fire Support, the Zumwalt was designed around a bevy of modern weapons. Actually, a bevy of modern weapons were designed around the Zumwalt.
BAE built the Advanced Gun System (AGS), a naval artillery system, specifically for the Zumwalt. And Lockheed Martin built the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) as ammunition specifically for the AGS. In fact, the AGS cannot operate without the LRLAP—a rocket-assisted, 155m projectile with fin glide trajectory. So, when the Navy cancelled procurement of the LRLAP, the AGS was left without ammunition. That’s right: The AGS does not have any ammunition.
And those weapons have now been pulled from the three remaining Zumwalts, pending replacement at some future date with hypersonic missiles that are still being developed by the US military.
I mention all of this because it may reveal a basic flaw in the assumptions of the wargame itself: The gamers may not be able to accurately describe the OOBs of the combatants in 2026. The massive advantages of the PRC’s industrial capabilities to produce weapons systems quickly, in large numbers, and at much lower cost than the US can manage is a definite advantage for them in an era of industrial warfare, and it seems to me this is not sufficiently accounted for in the various scenarios that were gamed.
WHAT IS VICTORY?
More important, what price victory?
The gamers define "victory” as:
Key Outcome: Taiwanese Autonomy
The key condition for judging outcomes was the continued autonomy of Taiwan as a political entity. This condition excludes consideration of damage to the Taiwanese economy or the extent of U.S. losses. While these factors remain relevant and the concluding chapter of this report considers them in the context of the military outcome, the stated U.S. and Taiwanese policy goal is autonomy, without a discussion of cost.
The problem with this approach is that it can lead to a mindset that finds the following perfectly logical:
“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.
China’s strikes on Japanese bases and U.S. surface ships cannot change the result: Taiwan remains autonomous.
There is one major assumption here: Taiwan must resist and not capitulate. If Taiwan surrenders before U.S. forces can be brought to bear, the rest is futile.
This defense comes at a high cost. The United States and Japan lose dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of servicemembers. Such losses would damage the U.S. global position for many years. While Taiwan’s military is unbroken, it is severely degraded and left to defend a damaged economy on an island without electricity and basic services.
The games were deliberately and understandably time limited, due to the nature of the question: Can the US defeat a PRC invasion of Taiwan? Once that issue was deemed to be decided, the games were stopped.
But this is not to say that merely because the invasion was defeated, China was defeated. The PRC is a vast nation, with an economy larger than that of the US, a more effective industrial base, particularly in the manufacture of military weaponry, and none of these scenarios posited anything that would change that relative advantage. And while many of the scenarios predicted the destruction of essentially the entire PLAN fleet, they don’t provide any assurance that the US won’t be forced by its own losses (which could have massive repercussions both domestically and internationally) to leave a shattered Taiwan fighting on by itself. How Taiwan manages to resupply its own military in the face of continued bombardments from Chinese ground-based assets or defend against a renewed amphibious assault using different carriers - say, the Hong Kong ferry fleet - while its own people are starving and dying in the dark, a result almost inevitable when a modern high-tech society collapses more or less overnight, is left unexamined.
And that, I submit, is a mistake. While the authors understand the potential longer-term ramifications of their conclusions, we must keep in mind that the stated purpose of these games was to provide policymakers and the general public with an anchor point from which to discuss the defense of Taiwan aainst an amphibious PRC invasion.
Policymakers too often, and the general public almost invariably, will look to take the most obvious and simple conclusions and use them as the sum total of their understanding of the situation. Hence, we could end up with the primary takeaway from these games as being “We win. They lose.”
And that is absolutely the wrong message that should be sent. What we should be debating is an entirely different proposition: If a military defense of Taiwan results in a temporary and short-lived defeat of the invaders, but destroys Taiwan as a functioning modern state, destroys much of the US military power in the Pacific, devastates the American economy, relegates the US to status as a second-rate military power when compared to, say, Russia, shatters the power of the political leadership in the US, (we do not handle military defeat well, especially when the fact of it cannot be avoided), and a number of other, possibly even greater, unanticipated and unintended consequences, is this a project we really want or need to undertake?
I submit that the overall risk-reward calculus is not tilted in our favor. That given, the last message we should want to take from these games is “America Number One! Ooorah!”
Unfortunately, I suspect the odds of that happening are quite high. Therefore, my judgement is that the potential benefit of these games is outweighed by the likelihood that they will warp, rather than aid, correct policy decisions and the fostering of intelligent, realistic debate among the American people and their leadership.
Read Part One here: Let's Play a Game That Makes an Ass Out of You and Me: Wargaming Taiwan, Part One