Mines are not something that magically appear where you wish them to be. Nor can you have the mines you wish you had - only the mines that were bought ahead of time and assigned. It is highly problematic laying minefields in some of the densist sea lanes in the world. You cannot do so until the merchants are well clear, and that takes time. Nor can you do so before you have minelaying assets in the right places. Submarine laid mines, for example, require submarines to lay them. And we probably have no submarines we will be willing to risk in the strait in a war. China plans to lay mine barriers north and south of the invasion corredor, and defended minefields are very hard to clear. The act of hunting the mines betrays your position, and gets you killed. Similarly, surface laid mines are not an option until surface ships can operate in the strait. Air laid mines obviously require airplanes not doing something else. And air laid mines are not that good - they don't get laid at an exact location like other mines can. This is a big problem, especially if you DO plan to sail those waters with anything. ROC, for example, plans counterlandings - so THEY want to sail those waters. But the big problem is just the number of mines and the area involved: you don't have enough mines to lay everywhere. And you cannot lay very many very fast, of most types. So this is a complicated subject, not a trump you draw and play as a single card and say "see - I win." Mines are more likely to help the enemy than us. Partly because of the nature of the initiative - he can even preposition mines - partly because he is close and has lots of assets - partly because we are distant and have only limited numbers of mines and delivery systems - systems with lots of other potential missions. USAF objected to using bombers to lay mines in 1945, in spite of the great effectiveness of the mine campaign. So even to the extent we can use mines, we might not want to.

So what happens when they get Taiwan and in the process got mauled by the Taiwanese and then we move in, in force by day 14-21? I just dont see how they could expect to hold the Island much longer than 30 days without massive preparation.

First, it is not a correction. I stated the USAF assets in the area. An announcement this will change at some unspecified time in the future is not strictly a correction - the stated number is correct. Second, it is not directed against China, and these bombers (unlike those there now) have not played with the Navy (the ones on Guam are officially stated to be the first to actually do so). The will not be terribly useful unless and until they too have learned the rather different art of ship identification and hunting. [It is difficult enough air forces often do not do it well]. Third, it is not clear how long they will deploy. Present planning is contemplating doubling the force on Guam in the medium term - from 6 to 12. A temporary deployment "to send a message to Korea" may or may not mean they are there when China jumps off. If jump off were tonight, they are not there. So you are counting your chickens before they hatch. Or maybe the chickens won't be there any more by the time you need them. On the other hand, I expect most of the bomber force could move forward in a war. And I am pretty sure expeditionary air wings will - they will include a few bombers each plus other planes.

You got your wish. Massive preparation is the only fitting term - unless you can think of a stronger one. There are about 40,000 men just involved in the planning process. There are hundreds of engineering projects EVERY YEAR building infrastructure for the "Taiwan Operation." And PLA, ROC, US DOD and I do NOT think ROC will be able to "maul" them. I hope all are wrong and you are right about that. But IF surprise is achieved, many naval and air units will be lost in the initial missile/air strikes, and the rest will be reluctant to come out except when the odds are good they can do damage and survive.

Those B-1s and B-52s were given “orders”, which means that the date of deployment is not “unspecified”. Since the orders were cut in 2003, I assume that the deployment will be within the next year or so. Since the Andersen AFB website is off-line, I cannot check it out. Re: “not directed against China” The planes can be sent wherever they are needed. Re: “have not played with the Navy” Check the following http://www2.hickam.af.mil/pacaf/news/rf.htm where B-52s from Andersen AFB and Barksdale AFB, B-1s from Dyess AFB, and F-15Es from Elmendorf AFB all “played with the Navy” just fine. I am also sure that as in all recent large operations, all air assets will be assigned to a single command so that everyone plays nice. Re: “art of ship identification and hunting” This is actually two parts. 1.ID. Just target the largest ships, traveling in formation, headed across the strait. I know that this is over simplistic. We have very detailed imagery of every PLAN anphib ship in her inventory and should have no problem with ID. 2.Hunting. In an ocean, there is no cover, hunting is easier, especial while traveling in formation. But, lets not drown in semantics, my original post was about the possibly of using JDAM/JASSM equipped aircraft to damage or destroy most of an invasion fleet and it's support/resupply operations. Maybe we should just by one of the thousands of outlying Philippians islands and make a base on it . :)

The B-52 commander at Guam said they didn't get to "play with the navy" when based stateside. A formal USAF press release about the JDAM and other munition tests stated NO USAF unit EVER BEFORE had used them against a moving maritime target. This because they were being used for the FIRST time in November. Seems the 1948 JCS agreement is not honored in a practical sense (the Navy gets no bombers, USAF bombers are supposed to double as naval bombers at need). I am offended to report this and I will admit even in my worst moments of criticism I never dreamed USAF had never done any training at all of this sort. But that is what USAF said in 2004. Believe what you will, naval operations are not like normal land operations, and you cannot get any good if you don't get out there and do them. Anyway - even the entire bomber force is not sufficient. And USAF does not fight with bombers that way - they give a small number to teach expeditionary air wing. We are talking about something like 15,000 maritime targets - before they do anything to make it look like more than that. If they didn't shoot back your bomber force is not big enough. Because they will shoot back and have figher cover you may not even get to run in a second strike. Probably it is not that bad - probably you will not do much damage but not lost most of your bombers. But it is anything but a "this solves the problem" kind of thing. Formal studies, DOD, RAND and academic, uniformly conclude it takes strike wings and carrier air groups to win.

Re: “NO USAF unit EVER BEFORE” I agree that this was the first operational exercise. There have been plans/ideas on a B-52/Harpoon launch platform before. Just because they have not “played nice” before, doesn't mean the cannot in the future. Re: “1948 JCS agreement is not honored” This “inter-service rivalry” that permeates the US military sickens me. Not only the USAF/Navy issue you spoke of, but also the issue of the Army not being allowed to own fixed wing CAS/Cargo aircraft. With ¾ of the earths surface covered in water, for the USAF not to regularly train in maritime strikes is practically criminal. Re: “15,000 maritime targets” According to http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/navy.htm China has less than 150 amphibian class ships of useful size. They have an aditioal 200+ in reserve that can carry 1 vehicle at a time and go under 14 knots (nice slow target.). The thing to watch out for is their large ro-ro ships that can transport hundreds of vehicles at a time. Re: “Because they will shoot back and have fighter cover you may not even get to run in a second strike.” Anything that can shoot back is the first target of the JASSM strikes. All of their advanced fighters will be taken care of the moment they show themselves. I think the current total J-11/SU-30 inventory stands at ~150. Thy would be able to cover the northern and southern approaches to the strait, but not the eastern because they would have to overfly the Taiwanese mainland. I think that the Taiwanese AF would have something to say about that. Re: “probably you will not do much damage” “it takes strike wings and carrier air groups to win. “ The main target of these INITIAL strike is to “cut off the head” of the invasion. Target the larger combat ships, large amphibian ships, and large ro-ro carriers. Give the Navy enough time to get involved and give the Taiwanese people a fighting change to stem the invasion.

"A formal USAF press release about the JDAM and other munition tests stated NO USAF unit EVER BEFORE had used them against a moving maritime target." -- ElCid ElCid, I already told you what this meant. Of course no unit (by the way, that statement could be broadened to include NAVY as well) has ever before used them against a moving maritime target. That's because no JDAM has ever before been used against ANY moving target until only two years ago, when the AMSTE program began testing different scenarios. There's nothing unreasonable in the slightest that it took merely a puny two measly years to stage a maritime scenario demonstration--and demonstration is what this was. They've demonstrated the concept is viable. Now they can start training crews to do it. AMSTE/JDAMs against naval targets is a huge expansion to our maritime precision strike capability. Instead of whining about how we couldn't do it in the past, be happy that we will soon be able to do it operationally. Displacedjim

The 15000 targets are not amphibs per se - they are all naval vessels in the task groups in the op - since you wanted to hit those loading as well as those at sea I included both. You have to sort them out from the many non-military targets in the area if you go in early - if you waited the targeting problem at least simplifies because neutrals and true Chinese civilians have left the Total Exclusion Zone. [PRC plans to declare one, using that name, and I assume ROC will pretty much do the same thing. In the Falklands, after slight modifications, both sides ended up with the same zones. Only the Belgrano action occurred outside the zone, and not by much.] The problem is that it is not easy for ANYONE to tell WHICH targets are vital ones? And USAF crews that do not get much training or practice in naval recognition attempting to do so with fancy standoff munitions probably have dismal chances of identifying the best targets. USAF and USAAF have some spectatular target recognition problems in history, and USAF damaged more allied ships in Viet Nam than the enemy did. Failure to ID targets properly may not be good for ROCN ships either. A clever enemy could exaserbate this issue in several ways, and there is evidence of studies directed to that end, because of the difficulties USAF/USN had in targeting in Bosnia (because they were fooled by decoys). Dismiss this issue if you like, but it is one of the probable biggies: not one of those Jim likes to say is a one in a billion shot I worry about. Many analysts I know think we will be forced to close to WITHIN visual range and select targets the old fashioned way - with the Mark One Eyeball - and then only if someone has a clue what they are looking at. It would not shock me to learn they put naval observers on B-52s, for example, just to help with this sort of thing. Totals of Su family aircraft in China exceed 200. And these are not the only ones you must worry about. J-10 is operational, and it may be actually better than an Su-27 in some respects. The J-8s have quite good radar and may perform very well as interceptors. J-7Es (and related) may be very good at tactical combat. TOR-M1 and S-300 SAMs may also be significant problems, especially if they are at sea in unexpected places, and of course you must mess with them if you go for the embarcation ports as you said you would. There are certain to be enemy AEW machines and some interesting other assets to help the situational awareness of the enemy. There are enough variables here it is more than possible things may not work out well for tiny packages of bombers. In some situations, it may be probable they will have trouble. IF you can get over the idea of "sinking the invasion fleet" (last post) or "cut off the head" (this post), your concept of nibbling at the naval forces early is sound. It is the sum of attrition that matters - if there are not enough enemy forces on Taiwan to beat ROCA we win. ANY attrition helps to this end. And modern, fast, long range bombers CAN engage on attack profiles that are likely to cause attrition, even if significantly opposed. We might have to go over to more conservative hit and run tactics, but we should be able to do that, even before we own the sky. My main point is we will NOT own the sky at first. And the bombers are not going to take control of the sky. The first few fighters that appear won't either. We will not kill "anything that appears" for a while at least. Not until we have numbers sufficient to be competative. Even if we had total success with F-22s, for example, they will have to retire when they run out of ammunition, and the sky will not yet be swept, very likely. And total success is against my personal religion to expect. If it happens, fine - but don't plan as if it must happen. The enemy knows about F-22s, and won't be engaging without at least some kind of idea what to do - win lose or draw.

OK. For the record, I am happy we have JDAMs. I don't think they are magic, and I don't think they solve the problem of target classification in a complex environment, but I do think they increase our capabilities significantly. I hope we have enough and I hope no one comes up with a way to mess with their effectiveness. Happy now (Jim)?