8 – Airpower and the Sino-American Contest for Military Primacy in Asia
The International Security PodcastShow Notes
Nicholas Anderson and Daryl Press argue that the current U.S. approach for operating airpower to defend Taiwan risks catastrophic defeat. They have created a new, unclassified, and transparent model that explores multiple scenarios in a Taiwan conflict. They find that in such a conflict, the United States would likely lose hundreds of aircraft to Chinese strikes on airfields. They also suggest that the U.S. Air Force’s proposed solution to this possibility, the Agile Combat Employment doctrine, would likely fail while raising the risk of escalation. Instead, Anderson and Press’s model indicates that hardened aircraft shelters may offer a way to blunt Chinese attacks.
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