The Military Thread

"Navy relieves captain who raised alarm about coronavirus outbreak on aircraft carrier"

Eh, no one gets it. Jumping the chain of command and screaming like he did was disrespect to his commander and the Navy.

An enlisted sailor who did that would get some harsh punishment.

You may not like it but that's how the military works.

Is there a replacement for the ship’s captain? That’s the next question.

Edited by Ominae on Apr 2nd 2020 at 10:56:27 AM

There should be a replacment for the politician instead, the captian made the right call.

Maybe get an actual Secretary of the Navy to weigh in on this one.

My question is how much "we'll get back to you" he got before he sent that mail.

Because I doubt this was his first response.

And given the Administration's stellar response to this crisis so far...

If it turns out he got told to 'hold tight' on the situation because the WH didn't bwant the embarrassment of it, I will not be surprised.

Chain of Command is good and all, but of a Captain of something like a carrier I'd expect more command thinking than from some lowly rating.

Edited by 3of4 on Apr 3rd 2020 at 11:14:50 AM

Apparently, Korean workers on US bases there are getting furloughed.

Also he got one heck of a sendoff from the crew.

Especially since the acting SECNAV has admitted they can't prove he's the one who leaked the letter.

https://youtu.be/4DC7FDsVPhU

In summary, he got canned for embarrassing the administration while looking out for his people. There's worse ways to end your career.

A Noodle Incident from Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour (namely, this one) and a mod's fleshed-out interpretation of said event have gotten me thinking... In what scenario would it be plausible that China invades Taiwan and eventually succeeds in completely defeating the defenders before the USA could even fire a single shot, and the US government decides to not attempt to liberate Taiwan?

I'm assuming that a sufficiently isolationist POTUS would be an important factor on the US side, by weakening the US's overseas military presence enough that it would be plausible that the Pacific Fleet was caught flat-footed while at a dock on the other side of the Pacific, as well as not only lacking the will to seek Taiwanese liberation but having a sufficiently strong desire to avoid conflict with China over the matter altogether. But what about Taiwan? The island is infamous for being heavily fortified out of a Properly Paranoid expectation that doing otherwise would be giving the PRC an open invitation to walk in and take over. Maybe the country has to get hit with an unexpectedly destructive typhoon/tsunami/earthquake first?

First part is pretty easy, for all the stuff we send them and all the "advisors" there if the PRC really wanted to put the screws to Taiwan it'd get crushed.

Whether or not we move to liberate Taiwan afterwards depends on what kinda gamble we wanna make with possibly starting WW3, although it's worth saying China is a very fragile country all things considered and probably couldn't survive retaliation.

It's like Poland or all the smaller Balkan countries in NATO.

Could Russia eat them for breakfast before anybody can stop them? Absolutely.

Would they last the week afterwards? That's much less certain.

Edited by LeGarcon on Apr 4th 2020 at 12:45:30 PM

"First part is pretty easy, for all the stuff we send them and all the "advisors" there if the PRC really wanted to put the screws to Taiwan it'd get crushed."

I dont think I agree. The idea with most US military alliances (including Taiwan and NATO's east flank) is that the locals should be tough enough to slow down the invading forces just long enough for the US to reinforce them. If the invaders continue on with engaging the US reinforcements—then WWIII becomes a distinct possibility. That's the idea anyway. If, somehow, an invader could occupy our ally so quickly that we couldn't intercede until after the fighting was over—well, then the US has a very tricky decision to make. I frankly don't know what we would do in that case.

I dont think mainland China could take Taiwan down so quickly that the US couldn't respond. If they could, China would have taken them already. We have air and naval assets nearby that could be there in a matter of a day or two. Establishing air superiority over the Taiwan straight ends the invasion right then and there.

The problem is that every Taiwanese citizen knows that the ROC's strategy - the only real viable one - is to hold out long enough for American reinforcements or aid to arrive.

All it takes is an isolationist President and/or Congress to go "nope, let's not drag Americans into another POINTLESS WAR and focus on our problems at home instead!" to undo that, demoralizing the Taiwanese to the extent that many (particularly Kuomintang supporter) believe that currying favor with the PRC instead of NEEDLESSLY ANTAGONIZING CHINA is the more pragmatic option instead of continued resistance. It's what happened to South Vietnam in 1975 after all.

Unlike the impossibly stretched SV however, Taiwan is one of the most defensible islands in the world. The US military even canceled its planned invasion because the projected casualties would be too costly because how virtually everything about Taiwan's environment favors the defenders. The only flat plains are located to the far west, and they've now been paved over with cities that an invading army could get bogged down in a Stalingrad or Grozny scenario. The only flat beaches and ports safe for landing are on the western side of the island, while the eastern side is completely rocky and leads straight into the central mountain range that dominates more than 75% of the island. Due to being located at the cross-point between the warm southern tides of the South China Sea and the colder ones of the Sea of Japan, the seas around Taiwan are notoriously violent and have regular typhoons that would interfere with air or naval operations.

A worst case scenario with a passive US would be the complete collapse of the ROC government - although its members may flee abroad and attempt to form an exiled government - and annexation of Taiwan. A puppet government (probably with a Hong Kong-style "democracy") would be set up using members of the Taiwanese population friendly or accepting of mainland rule.

The best case scenario even with a passive US would be that the ROC military and its supporters remain intact enough to retreat into the mountain ranges and wage a protracted struggle with a trickle of foreign aid, likely from the CIA and Japan (one of Taiwan's closest allies due to Taiwan being the only former colony to view Japanese rule positively). In Taiwan, it's an open secret that the mountains host a Maginot Line of hardened shelters and arsenals (they've been preparing for a PLA invasion since 1949 after all).

IMO, the unexpected Covid-19 pandemic will be the most important variable in a hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan. An American nation and US military ravaged by the virus may be too weak or distracted to aid Taiwan, but effective resistance by the Taiwanese may force the PLA to deploy more troops to fight, weakening the mass lockdowns that the PLA must enforce on the mainland and potentially enabling to virus to spread again. If Covid-19 spreads among the PLA, its officer corps will be at most risk because of how vulnerable older men are to it.

Do the Taiwanese have any guerrilla warfare contingency plans in that case, regarding the mountain retreat?

Also the US isn’t the only player on the global stage, an aggressive China invading Taiwan might provoke a response from India or even Europe, that’s assuming that the rest of East Asia/South-East Asia doesn’t get involved.

Europe wouldnt be able to help at all, other then the US the remaining 5 of 6 most powerful militaries are in order, Russia, China, India, Japan, South Korea...

And it's pretty bad when the SDF which exists on questionably legal grounds has a more powerful military force then Germany who has 4 working airplanes, The United Kingdom which has 2 carriers but no airplanes for them and tanks with no ammo and no ability to borrow ammo from any one else since they insisted on using smooth bore guns... and france who is arguably the last european military worth a damn.

4 airplanes and 2 floating warehouses with no munitions wont even make the PLA blink.

Edited by Imca on Apr 4th 2020 at 12:57:03 PM

This is based on what? I suspect it’s some website I’ve encountered before that just rates national militaries based on raw numbers and doesn’t do proper comparisons for things like technology levels, strategic capabilities and depth of training.

You’re buying into/propagating nationalist propaganda if you think that the entire Royal Navy is worthless because it’s aircraft carriers current don’t have planes.

I don’t know exactly how well the submarine service would aid a defence fo Taiwan from naval invasion, but I know they’d make a hell of an impact.

That’s one section of the Royal Navy.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 4th 2020 at 9:18:34 AM

I wouldn’t put Russia anywhere on that list. Their force projection capabilities are almost zero.

Global firepower index, and you might be right because Europe is way too high on that list with Germany at 11.

Like I am not making a joke there they have a whole 4 aircraft, and the british have zero ammo for the tanks and are currently trying to get the germans to regun the challenger to use NATO ammo... And submarines? I can give the UK those but at the same time you cant win a war with subs alone, the kreigsmarine tried... twice.

Europe is in hilariously bad shape as far as militaries go, they are legitimatly non functional at this point and with the exception of France can be wrote off as any kind of military power at all.

Edited by Imca on Apr 4th 2020 at 2:31:38 AM

Russia's got pretty significant force projection all over eastern europe, the middle east now, and they've still got a small force in Venezuela.

Germany has zero heavy lift aircraft, a majority of it's tanks are out of commission, it's entire Tornado fleet is grounded. The entirety of the Luftwaffe's offensive fixed wing craft is a handful of operational Eurofighters.

It's officer corp is basically nonexistent and they're facing severe shortages of basic materials like tents and uniforms.

There was a report last year about it, Merkel was fucking pissed.

Eastern Europe is easily serviced by domestic logistics trains for Russia. Outside of that their long range logistics capabilities are essentially zero, Syria is basically the limit of what we can do and as we saw that strained their aviation capabilities literally to their breaking point. They’re a regional power at best, kept relevant only by their rapidly aging nuclear arsenal.

Their aviation capabilities were and still are doing just fine.

The only thing they stressed and broke was the Kuznetsov

Yeah, our military's kind of a joke equipment-wise right now.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 4th 2020 at 11:53:22 AM

According to who? The Kremlin?

One of the main points of the military reforms they’ve been working on is to enhance their strategic mobility capabilities, which are seriously lacking right now. [1] Outside of their borders they have extremely limited deployment capabilities. A deployment like what we see in Syria or Venezuela is literally all they’re able to sustain outside their train network, and they’re operating at the limits of their abilities with just the few small deployments they’ve got going on.

Edited by archonspeaks on Apr 4th 2020 at 3:01:05 AM

Nitpick: they insisted on using rifled guns when nearly everyone else uses smoothbores (mostly clones of Rheinmetall's 120mm L/44 or L/55 guns), I think because of something to do with HESH rounds.