Tom Shugart Profile picture
Feb 8, 2023 28 tweets 11 min read Read on X
Now that Balloongate has died down, a few thoughts on @CSIS’s recent Taiwan wargaming report. There was a fair bit of discussion of this a few weeks ago, but it’s taken me some time to review the report and gather my thoughts, so here they are:
csis.org/analysis/first…
There were a fair number of headlines about this report/study, some of them with fairly sanguine takeaways: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
And indeed the overall finding was that China would be unlikely to succeed in an invasion of Taiwan, if (and this is a key if), 4 conditions hold:
These 4 conditions are non-trivial: much has been written about the sometimes-parlous state of Taiwanese military training and manning, for reasons not within the US control JPN might restrict use of bases on its territory, & the US may well not have enough long-range ASCMs.
Before we even get to those findings, though, with any wargame the entering assumptions, method of play, and player constraints of the game can strongly affect any such outcome.
After taking a close look at how the CSIS team set this up, I have to say I was deeply impressed by the thoroughness with which they considered just those sort of variables. IMO the vast majority of their (often tough) choices were entirely reasonable, and the process solid.
I particularly like how they made this an iterative process, running the game 24(!) times and twisting various knobs along the way. This is a great way to do it - seeing what works for each side or doesn’t, which variables/assumptions matter most, and what results are consistent.
Going into some of the game series’ assumptions, it won’t surprise my followers to see that I was quite happy to see the use of Chinese civilian RoRo shipping integrated into the analysis, as an additional source of cross-Strait sealift capacity, as a given.
This matters a great deal, as one of the main takeaways from the game was that a major limiting factor for success in an invasion was China’s capacity to land and sustain enough troops to take the island.
Since the survival (or not) of China’s invasion fleet is so important, one of the key variables the team looked at was the number of available anti-ship missiles. A key question they had was whetherthe new JASSM-ER long-range missile will have a maritime strike capability.
The team elected to use as a base case assumption that it would have such a capability, and as a pessimistic excursion that it would not. This mattered a lot in the game’s results, given the quite limited LRASM inventory (a few days’ worth), and much larger JASSM-ER numbers.
While the team’s decision to make JASSM-ER anti-ship-capable in the base case was a reasonable one, it’s an area where I differ.
While the USAF’s budget documents say nothing about an anti-ship version of JASSM-ER, it turns out the Navy’s FY23 docs do - it’s called the AGM-158C.
So I think the question of whether it’s likely that there will be a maritime-strike version of JASSM-ER looks to me to have been answered - it’s the Navy AGM-158C, and under current plans we’d have 31 or so available by 2026 (when the game is set).
For these reasons, I think it would make more sense to have it the other way round - as a base case that only LRASM and the 30ish Navy C-versions have anti-ship capability, and an excursion case where levers get pulled and that gets added to the USAF’s JASSM-ERs, too.
The other area where I differed with the CSIS team was in that question of sealift capacity. While, again, I was happy to see them take into account supplemental civilian sealift, IMO they somewhat underestimated the scale of that capacity.
For the 2026 timeframe, the report states that they anticipated an amphibious fleet that included 30 large civilian RoRos, and that the combined PLA Navy/civilian fleet could put ashore about 8K personnel, or 16K every 3.5 days.
In this recent article I estimated that, absent other constraints, China’s sealift capacity could deliver about 60K troops in the first wave, and then 300K troops in about 10 days (or about 30K per day).
warontherocks.com/2022/10/mind-t…
Also, my current count is that there are about 80 RoRo ferries operated by ferry companies known to be associated with the PLA, though I don’t know how many of those would qualify as “large” for them. Almost all those in my count are larger than about 4,000 displacement tons.
Clearly, there’s some daylight between our analyses here. As I said in my article, other than capacity China “will face other challenges, such as port loading, conducting logistics over the shore, or a lack of joint warfighting effectiveness.” That may account for some of it.
I imagine the truth is probably somewhere in between. In any case, IMO a useful excursion could be to analyze what happens if China went on a building spree, and had a much larger sealift force (naval, civilian, or a mix). After all, China is the world’s largest shipbuilder.
Remember - the US entered WWII with essentially no specialized amphibious assault ships, and <3 years later we did this:
Moving past assumptions, let’s talk about some of the key takeaways. First, a topic that’s been of interest to me for years - PRC strikes on U.S. bases in Japan: cnas.org/publications/r…
The team’s consistent findings were that the Chinese-side players consistently struck not only U.S. bases in Japan, but JSDF bases as well. These strikes were necessary, they worked, and they were of a net benefit to the PRC operationally, even if they brought Japan into the war.
Massed long range missile strikes had major effects in the game: 90% percent of U.S. and allied/partner aircraft were destroyed on the ground, and typically the U.S. lost two forward-deployed CVNs in the initial days of the war.
On the topic of Marine Littoral Regiments (MLRs), the team found what I have suspected: that while these units are nice to have, they lack the sheer number of weapons to really move the needle in a large-scale conflict like this.
Another key takeaway, and one that shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s spent much time contemplating modern naval warfare - expect heavy losses at sea, on both side. Typical for the game: 2 US CVNs and 7-20 major US warships. For China 50 or so major surface ships.
This means we should expect to lose more personnel in a matter of weeks, or even days, than we lost in the many years of the “forever wars”. There will be no “golden hour”, and in many cases recovery will not be possible at all. And there will be many MIA.
Ok, that’s enough for today. Next, I’ll take up the report’s many very solid recommendations. Until then…

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More from @tshugart3

Apr 20
In the "you can't make this stuff up" category, in this 16 Apr image of COMEC's Longxue shipyard in Guangzhou you can see 5 of China's new Shuiqiao-class "invasion barges", whose only apparent purpose is to invade Taiwan, as well as... Image
...based on AIS data, what also appears to be a container ship under construction for a TAIWANESE Company, Evergreen Lines.

(and a couple of Zubr-class assault hovercraft, PLA Navy auxiliaries, and more.) Image
Image
To be clear, this sort of thing has been talked about before, even in Taiwan: taipeitimes.com/News/front/arc…
Read 8 tweets
Apr 18
A few interesting tidbits from INDOPACOM Commander Admiral Paparo's recent testimony. First, he puts China's warship production at a ratio of "6-to-1.8" to ours, or about 3.3 to 1. Image
This exceeds any of my estimates, which usually run a bit over 2-to-1 in hull count, and about 1.5-1 in tonnage.
Makes me wonder if there are PLAN ships I missed, or perhaps he's counting only surface combatants? Not sure.
On the topic of SLCM-N, he gives a full-throated endorsement. Of note, this is not the STRATCOM commander, but the theater commander that might actually need to use something like this (or have it to deter the other side's use of something similar). Image
Read 13 tweets
Mar 20
Hot off the presses: I'm pleased to announce the release of this @ChinaMaritime Note covering China's new Shuiqiao landing barges, which I co-authored with Michael Dahm. I hope that folks find it a useful source of info on this important new development. digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/14/
@ChinaMaritime Some highlights: first, our key takeaways. Image
@ChinaMaritime Next, we found patents for these or similar barges in filings from several years ago. In other words, this project has been in the works for a while now - not a reaction to the 2022 Pelosi visit, or the DPP's election win, etc. (not that I ever thought it was). Image
Image
Read 9 tweets
Mar 13
UPDATE: three of the PRC's new landing ships (I called them T-LPTs) have left the GSI Longxue shipyard. 🚨🚨🚨
In this 9 March image, we can see that three of the LPTs have left (numbers 6, 2, and 1 from the previous thread).

As such, one 4-, one 6-, and one 8-pillar LPT have departed, with one of each still under construction. Image
Image
Image
After seeing the departure of these vessels, I went back & observed AIS data to see if the vessels were using AIS.
What I saw was indications of tugs getting these ships underway, but no AIS from the ships themselves, unlike other commercial vessels.
marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/ce…
Read 10 tweets
Feb 13
@rand recently published this piece by Dr. Timothy Heath, in which he voiced substantial doubts about the PLA's combat readiness. It's received a fair bit of attention since then.

Having read it & examined the evidence he cites, I have some thoughts: Image
NOTE: if this thread looks familiar, it's because I put it up yesterday with a link to the article at the top. I'm re-upping it today as ab experiment to see if there's a difference in reach from not putting the link at the top (plus I'll fix some typos).
rand.org/pubs/perspecti…
Anyway, let's look at his key takeaways:
- the PLA is focused on upholding CCP rule rather than preparing for war
- PLA modernization is mostly to bolster CCP credibility
- over the PLA’s history it's prioritized political loyalty & CCP rule over combat readiness
- As China declines, the PLA’s mission of upholding CCP rule will become more important, combat readiness less so
- large-scale, high-intensity US-PRC war is improbable. If US-PRC tensions escalate, China will face strong incentives to favor indirect methods
- US defense planning elevate a broader array of threats versus remote possibility of war w/ ChinaImage
Read 40 tweets
Feb 12
@rand recently published this piece by Dr. Timothy Heath, in which he voiced substantial doubts about the PLA's combat readiness. It's received a fair bit of attention since then.

Having read it & examined the evidence he cites, I have some thoughts:
rand.org/pubs/perspecti…
First, let's look at his key takeaways:
- the PLA is focused on upholding CCP rule rather than preparing for war
- PLA modernization gains are designed first/foremost to bolster the credibility of the CCP
- over the PLA’s history, it's prioritized political loyalty and CCP rule over combat readiness
- As China declines, the PLA’s mission of upholding CCP rule will become more important, its combat readiness less so
- large-scale, high-intensity US-PRC war is improbable. If US-PRC tensions escalate, China will face strong incentives to favor indirect methods
- US defense planning should consider a threat framework that elevates a broader array of threats versus the remote possibility of war with ChinaImage
It will surprise no one who follows me that, while some of his points on the history of the PLA and CCP are valid, I disagree with his larger overall conclusion: that the threat of military aggression from the PLA in the future is remote due to a lack of combat readiness.
Read 37 tweets

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