Rare Look At Taiwan’s Chien Hsiang Kamikaze Drone In Action
(www.thedrive.com)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (17)
sorted by:
So long as Taiwan can slow or even halt China getting a foothold on the island, their chances of winning a war is drastically improved.
China can always 'win' going scorched earth but 2 main reasons why that's highly unlikely:
They lose all resources, manufacturing facilities and skilled personnel from Taiwan making it just a costly war
They send the message there is no point negotiating and no mercy given which means any future conflict, people will fight to the death knowing if they're going to die anyway, may as well kill as many Chinese as possible with them.
These kind of guided drones might be HIGHLY effective against ships like battleships and landing craft which combined with effective Anti-air would turn that island into a grave for China's ambitions.
The article mentions that the drones can´t sink ships but they can target parts of the ship, like their radar, making them vulnerable to other weapons, and you are quite right that Taiwan doesn´t need to win the war if there is a conflict with China, only make them pay a heavy price so that they think about it twice before embarking on any imperialist adventure, another given is that the US and Europe at least would impose sanctions on China and decouple their economies like they have done with Russia.
Sanctions mean shit really as look at most of the countries sanctioned by the West
If America REALLY wanted to hurt China to the point they may self implode again, use their navy to blockade the main sea route into China. They do that and the imports China heavily relies on gets cut off and they don't have the internal resources to cope with their population size.
Chyna just have to missile the power plants, taiwan will be surrendering within days. It might be the shortest war with the least amount of people dead ever. Taiwan has no will to fight, nobody is going to send troops to defend Taiwan, they're not Israel.
If that were true, Taiwan would've given into a Hong Kong style takeover than risk a war, not developing new drones, telling the Americans to hurry up with those arms they ordered and building and alliance with Japan and South Korea.
Taiwan has the advantage that it's an island and that it's predecessors planned for an invasion so built A LOT of redundancy systems like how it's highways are designed to serve as airstrip if it's airfields are taken out, lots of bunkers for aircraft and ambush points set up around possible beachhead sites. China would prefer that Taiwan submitted without force because it knows there's no way to take the island militarily without a mountain of Chinese corpses.
China doesn't want Taiwan to be their Okinawa
Taiwan obviously prefers the status quo, why surrender now when they know Chyna's absolute red line is declaration of independence, taiwan will dance near that line but never crosses it, but when it comes to life and death of an actual invasion, they'll choose life and surrender. Taiwanese being ethnic Chinese are very practical people, they're not going to fight to the death for nebulous ideal of freedom and democracy. Like I said, their power plants are exposed, there's no redundancy for that, they are suffering from frequent blackouts even now. Chyna doesn't even have to land any troops after knocking out the electricity for couple weeks. The weapons Taiwan purchased from the US are obsolete junks, they are means for corrupt Taiwanese politicians to get kickbacks from the corrupt us politicians who facilitated the deal, the Taiwanese people didn't want them, and know they won't be relying on them in case of invasion, the military purchase has always been hot topic for elections there, the common people rather use that money to build infrastructures such as more power plants than buying useless junks
I doubt very much that the families of those who die in the power plant strikes you suggested earlier, are going to surrender and forget all about it.
That is why Taiwan is developing drones, if their power plants are destroyed in a military strike that is a declaration of war and they can use their drones to destroy power plants in mainland China in return. Drones are offensive weapons, this is a message to China that they can strike them too, they won´t be stupid enough to start the war though.
destroying the power plants would come after Taiwan declares independence, which Chyna considers declaration of war. Chyna is not going to attack Taiwan first and Taiwan isn't going to strike at Chyna first or be dumb enough to declare independence. if US actually wants Taiwan to have strike capabilites with drones, US would've sold them the drone system that is already well developed and been bombing sand niggers for decades, which Chyna probably already have counter measures for after decades of tech theft and leaks, nothing Taiwan developed independently this late into the game will be able to even get pass Chyna's own defenses