US subs can't operate permissively in strait and increasingly within 1IC where PRC has built comprehensive seabed monitoring infra. Or that current TLAMs from SSGNs aren't performant againt even shit tier Iraqi/Russian hardware (~50% failure/interception rates), of which US has only 4 with 612 shots. Nor does TW remotely have or can stockpile enough fires to dent PRC heartland with aggressive defense budget. For reference currently US doesn't either hence rush to build up stockpiles for potentially 100,000s aimpoints most of which will be delivered by b21s 10+ years from now and that's just for some current PLA targets. Realistically PRC would destroy most of TW C4ISR in openning strikes and prevent TW from threatening invasion fleet which would make 150 mile sea transit relatively uncontested. Under such conditions - open waters where modern sensors has less noise to sort - establishing maritime logistics would be easier to protect than the land/air logisitics wagon US had to sustain for AFG. Current US vision for TW porcupine doctorine rests on TW fighting to the last man on TW soil because it's forgone PRC can land massive amounts of troops and hardware. The hope is US can disrupt this as TW buys time, not TW itself. Ultimately, PRC simply wouldn't attempt landing without securing theatre air superiority first, by the time they commit to maritime invasion, thousands of UAVs and would be droning a TW resistence reverted to Taliban tier capabilites. The other fundemental uncomfortable truth is PRC can mine TW shores and destroy airfields long term to siege island, and historically sustained sieges that prevent resupply generally end in capitulation.
All this plus PRC can blockade TW and completely sink their economy (while also straining all the economies that depend on their chips, including their own). In fact, they could even do that without physically invading the island after the C4ISR hit and just wait for TW to cry Uncle and capitulate. PRC has escalation dominance in this arena and without going nuclear, I don’t see the US winning. The solution here is political compromise (as it should have been in Ukraine). Either that or nuclear holocaust.
