![]() ![]() fleet was largely destroyed without relieving Taiwan.” “Under withering fire from Chinese submarines, air-launched and surface ships, the U.S. It was one of the most powerful naval flotillas of the modern era-and Chinese missiles and torpedoes still wrecked it. ![]() In one scenario, a huge American task force with two carriers, 29 cruisers and destroyers and 10 attack submarines steamed toward Taiwan, three weeks after the initial Chinese attack. fleet took its time organizing a powerful counterattack. In some of the more pessimistic-for Taiwan and its allies-simulations, a cautious U.S. ![]() It also reflects the vulnerability of surface ships to large salvos of modern anti-ship missiles.”īut American flattops were vulnerable even when they didn’t begin the war within range of Chinese missiles. forward-deployment aimed at deterring China. “These losses were partly an artifact of U.S. aircraft carriers as well as between seven and 20 other major surface warships (e.g., destroyers and cruisers),” the CSIS analysts added. “In all iterations of the base scenario, U.S. “‘Loss’ for nuclear ships might also mean that radioactivity had so contaminated the ship that it became unusable, even if still afloat,” the Cancians and Heginbotham pointed out. The conflict never lasted more than a few weeks, meaning a damaged ship was as immediately useful as a sunk ship was to either fleet. In most of CSIS’s simulations, the two forward carriers either sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean within the first four days of fighting, or suffered so much damage that their skippers had no choice but to sail out of the war zone. “Even with the base-case assumption that shipborne missile-defense works very well, there are simply too many attacking missiles to intercept.” “These salvos exhausted the ships’ magazines of interceptors,” the Cancians and Heginbotham wrote. The carriers and their escorting destroyers and cruisers put up a valiant fight. The carriers were just a few hundred miles from the Chinese coast when the balloon went up and the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force launched its first volleys of ballistic missiles, including potentially hundreds of anti-ship ballistic missiles. Ironically, these peacetime shows-of-force put the forward flattops-not to mention their 70 aircraft, dozen or so escorts and thousands of embarked sailors-at extreme risk in CSIS’s simulations. ![]()
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