But Taipei’s and Washington’s victory came with staggering losses of warships, aircraft, and personnel at a rate not seen since World War II. To be fair, the Pentagon has begun practicing Agile Combat Employment (ACE) tactics to disperse combat aircraft, which Cancian argues is good but insufficient. By contrast, he argues it’s more useful to increase the number of land-based anti-ship missiles sold to Taiwan, including 400 Harpoon missiles on order. In the target-rich environment of the Taiwan Strait, each submarine sank an average of eight large PLA ships per week. The PLA Navy will by then have many additional amphibious ships, missile destroyers/cruisers, aircraft carriers, stealth aircraft, combat drones, and hypersonic missiles.

Source: Forbes January 14, 2023 00:08 UTC