There are systems to intercept missiles in flight, the US has the Patriot for example. Taiwan also conveniently sits around 100 miles (160km) of the mainland, not far at all to be deploying ships, planes and other defense systems from the shore.
China has one major advantage too, hypersonic* missiles.
Everything you said is true, but still missile interception is a risky business, if not just a “pray to god you can shoot it down” event. Plus a high altitude bomber or sub can fire cruise missiles from a 1000 km away before quickly turning tail or slipping deep into the dark pacific, so interception would be difficult there are well.
Plus American interceptors out of Guam, Japan, Okinawa, Korea, or even Taiwan itself would complicate things significantly.
But you are right that Taiwan would be generally easier to defend.
However I doubt that the US has lagged behind in supersonic missile development, because if one thing, they absolutely love their weapons of war.
A war would be a shit show and Taiwan would probably be devastated either way. Either by a Chinese assault, or an American retaliation or counter assault.
It’s also concerning to think that it might just become a stalemate. The Chinese Navy would probably turn the US Navy to scrap, but at the same time how would a Chinese amphibious force fare against a city/mountainous terrain target that’s bristling every 3 meters with artillery, SAMS, tanks, anti ship launchers, AA, and Taiwanese/American soldiers?
not wanting to be an armchair general, since i don’t understand much about military things.
i make a guess that china has logistical advantage, continuous delivering ammo and weapons, they have a insanely strong industrial capability, and in a time of war that can be converted to, high speed trains make sure the equipment arrives safe and fast, while usa produced equipment would need to be delivered mostly by the pacific ocean since they don’t have a reliable way to deliver to a landmass close to taiwan and just finish the deliver by water, and chinas navy is very active in the pacific which can make such deliveries hard, i think for something to be delivered safe and quick, would be by diverting equipment from south korea or japan
China has th benefit of not needing to win, they only need to create the conditions for the USA to collapse. If they scrap the US Navy, it’s not hard at that point to just put things in stalemate and let the West falls apart.
Yes, but then you enter a war of attrition which has its own host of problems. After a while war exhaustion would steadily increase, and the impact of a war on china’s/the US’/the worlds economy would be devastating.
It would be a lethal game of Chicken.
