So the Iranians informed Turkyië, UAE, and other countries of the attack, 72 hours in advance. Turkyië, and others, invariably notified the US and Israel in turn. Couple that with the flight time of the drones (3-4 hours), Israel and friends had plenty of time to spool up their radars, missiles, and battle plans. Despite all that, four sites (military, not civilian) were hit, without casualties. Not to mention that the sites hit were involved in Israel's attack on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus. That tells me: the drones and cruise missiles were pawns, and the ballistic missiles were the true weapons of choice. Israel's battle plans and systems are crap against second tier ballistic missiles. See also Ukraine.
China would be better off blockading Taiwan by sea and air to restore Taiwan. No reason to kill their own people. Many people I've had dinner with in Taipei and Kaohsiung believe reuniting with China proper is inevitable, and several say desirable.
I think it's more likely China's going to choose a "kill the chicken to scare the monkey" strategy. Inflict a devastating defeat on the Philippines, the Taiwanese will think twice about seeking official independence. That country's military impotence and historic close ties with the United States make it the perfect victim.
To the contrary, the lessons learned from the Iranian retaliatory strike against Israel last weekend is that ballistic missile and hypersonics can penetrate Israeli A.D. particularly when camouflaged in a swarm of cheap drones. A couple rounds of these kind of attacks will deplete Israel and US supplied A.D. forces, just as Ukrainian forces have been depleted the same way by the Russians. Especially so since Israel and Taiwan are very tiny landmasses. Overnight Israel has lost the threat of nuclear annihilation and Iran has gained a Mutually Assured Destruction capability. This is a real game changer. It's just gonna take a little while for this baleful reality to sink in. Just as it's taken a little while for the West to realize that their Project Ukraine is being annihilated before their very eyes by the Russians and they are unstoppable hypersonics.
I'm sick of our non-stop wars and the trillions of dollars we pour into our military that goes light years beyond what's needed to protect our shores at home. The rest of it is pure hegemony. Let China rule the world if that's its intentions. It will be their downfall like ours. I oppose our proxy wars in Ukraine and Israel and oppose the proxy war over Taiwan that we are working so hard to provoke. They are foreign countries that have no impact on our daily lives. The U.S. backed the corrupt Chiang Kai-shek in a civil war against Mao. As Mao consolidated his victory the Nationalists fled to Formosa. Before and during the civil war, Formosa was a part of China. If Taiwan wants to remain independent (It did not become a democracy until 1996) it will have to do the diplomacy or fighting for itself.
Bently, not realistic, not a chance and completely naïve, but I am in 💯 % agreement with you and I believe the current situation is nothing less than treason against America and the interests of her people.
With China's industrial capability, in such a scenario we are talking about thousands of drones and hundreds of ballistic missiles, even with the best coordination and assistance, the situation is extremely difficult and the impact on Taiwan's economy will likely be catastrophic in the long term. It's the kind of threat that can't be tackled without strikes on mainland China. I don't know if this is a step that the West is willing to take or pay
The Iranian attack was carefully pre-announced, calibrated and targeted to make a point and test Israeli defenses, while not doing enough damage to start a major war, which the Islamic Republic clearly doesn't want.
The primary lesson I think we can take is that if the Iranian attack had been several times as heavy, Israel might have really suffered some serious damage. You can be sure that the People's Republic has taken note of that and will scale their plans accordingly.
Most of the drones seem to have been shot down by aircraft, so did not deplete the anti-ballistic missile defenses. There are numerous IDF videos showing this.
Iron Dome is for short range threats only, under 40km I believe, and doesn't seem useful for Taiwan. They need a longer range defense like David's Sling, with 70 - 300km range.
The IDF denied a C-130 was hit. Even if it was, this would have been pure luck as the Iranians seemed unable to target that precisely.
Taiwan is very close to China. Their airspace can very easily be flooded with cheap drones. As you correctly note, shooting down drones with missiles is expensive, but Iron Dome is the cheapest interceptor missile out there ($54K compared to other alternatives around $1 million each). David's Sling is designed for intermediate threats.
This is a primer for the requirement for directed energy weapons for air defense. The low cost per kill combined with unlimited (as long as the weapon is powered and cooled) engagements. Systems like Iron Beam and the Navy’s weapon systems could be manufactured by the Taiwanese to fill the gap.
If an attack was imminent, a spoiling attack against the Chinese launchers would cripple the rocket forces.
Stephen, is it true that Iran's attack cost around USD50m, and Israel's defense around USD1.3billion? Is there some way to cheapen the cost of defense?
Some people online are claiming that Iran and it's proxies could beggar Israel by launching less expensive attacks which need to be countered by very expensive defense strategies. Is that realistic? Wouldn't/couldn't Israel just destroy something very expensive or costly in Iran?
There is an asymmetry especially with drones. I think any further Iranian attacks will involve direct attacks on Iran, so the advantages are outweighed by the consequences.
Among all the MSM tropes, I haven't seen answers to some basic questions about the Iranian response to Israel's curiously timed consular attack (on what was technically Iranian territory).
Iran invented chess a while ago, and their actions tend to be strategically coherent.
A calculated provocation must have been planned by Netanyahu to provoke an Iranian response, after Iran had signalled and moved very clearly to suggest they (like Hezbollah) would prefer for various reasons to avoid escalation.
They could not do nothing, and a symbolic reaction, carefully calibrated and announced well in advance, on military infrastructure linked to the Damascus attack was not remotely surprising.
But what I miss in the MSM is any attempt to carefully read the details of the attack.
The airfield in the Negev whose defence was penetrated, according to some reports by hypersonic missiles, is the main base for Israels's most advanced planes, including those involved in the Damascus attack.
I've read that missiles also hit the Northern intelligence hub in the Golan, presumably responsible for framing the attack.
As well as satisfying the Iranian public's and Arab neighbours' (and their 'streets' or public's) need for an appropriate reaction, the Iranian response invited by Netanyahu also seems to indicate that, like the Israelis in their previous sophisticated targetings, the Iranians were making a strategic statement more than a 'failed attack'.
"We know how and where our enemy operates, and we know how to hit them harder if that in turn becomes appropriate."
With Biden refusing American assistance in any further Israeli attack, while guaranteeing defence (except perhaps against hypersonic attacks without warning) that leaves the beleaguered Netanyahu in quite a tough place.
"Your move", now says Iran - and maybe like a chessplayer they're thinking a few moves ahead.
Israel is trying to drag America into a full-scale war with Iran in order to fulfill the vision of the greater Israel and also displace Palestinians to Jordan and Sinai. Persia must balance a difficult situation, and at the same time deal with its internal problems
Stephen - many thanks once more for your technical analysis... but I still don't find your dismissal of the Red Peril in Eastern Europe consistent with your concerns about the Yellow Peril and the Middle East.
What yellow peril in the middle east? You sound like you own the world and are some kind of racist from the 19th century? What kind of readership is on this sub stack?
Not entirely, but I do assume that drones, specific air-borne drones, will be the weapon of choice for both sides. When one side runs out of the ability to down the enemies drones, its all over.
The Americans will in all likelihood be militarily humiliated by China later this decade. The sensible action for the US at this time is to stabilize the relationship, accept that Taiwan will be lost, and get to work reindustrializing the US.
The impact of Chinese high end industry will be like a tsunami hitting a cardboard outhouse. The tsunami will start smashing us toward the end of this year and will be wave after wave, relentless, destroying industry after industry. We have no time to fantasize about defending Taiwan.
Rule #1 of effective strategy is to understand limitations, and not just in the present. What will our future limitations be? China's industrial capacity is spooling up at a rapid clip, and the opposite is the case in the US. Every day that passes is one where the US is now less likely to prevail in a war with China in & around Taiwan or the SCS.
From what I understand, the USA has outsourced essentially all of its micro chip manufacturing to Taiwan, which would be lost if it cedes Taiwan to China. Unless something is done to change this beforehand, it would be disastrous to the US for Taiwan to fall to Red China. China wants the micro chip industry too because theirs is substandard, also from what I understand.
Some of the high end AI, graphics and microprocessor chips are made in Taiwan. This is the case for NVIDIA's AI processor. The US does not yet have foundries that can produce chips with feature sizes down to around 3 or 4 nm
It does not say TSMC is doing the same as Intel in the US. I don't think so. The Intel project is still in the future and is not guaranteed to be successful (that is to say, it has a lot of risk, since Intel is not experienced in this tiny feature sizes). I hope Intel can do this as it is important for national security, but we have to wait and see. (The US is subsidizing this in a big way, which suggests Intel would not have done this without government help, and that is, truthfully, a bad omen. The last time we subsidized semiconductors it was a waste of billions.)
"but the most advanced capability is not being moved."
Doesn't that undermine the stated purpose of this?
Regardless of the official position, this smells like another corporate welfare scheme where plenty of money finds its way back to political campaigns, book and lecture deals, board seats and contracts for friends and relatives, etc..
TSMC's N4 is already EUV, the most advanced production mode in the world (SMIC and Huawei hope to reach 5nm in China next year): 'part of the US goal to onshore semiconductor manufacturing'.. though they started rather late.
Intel has iust reached 4nm, though their 'Meteor Lake' or Core Ultra design is actually a composite of one Intel 'tile' sitting on four TSMC tiles or subchips.
Anyway, the bottom line is as TSMC says 'to strengthen US national economic competitiveness', since EUV chips down to below 2nm are the 'picks and shovels' of AI, which is to the second phase of the Third Industrial Revolution (based on ITC) around 2000 what railways were to the second phase of the first revolution 200 years earlier.
This really goes deeper than kickbacks.
Kickbacks are more important in 'defense', and the key issue over Taiwan is probably more economic than military defense, though the two get pretty mixed up (DOD is tor example desperate to have the most advanced chips, and America always needs a boogeyman, whether the devil in 1619, or the Red Peril transitioning to Yellow Peril now).
"As one of TSMC’s advanced fabs, TSMC Arizona will play a vital role in the U.S. government’s goal to onshore semiconductor manufacturing and strengthen national economic competitiveness. TSMC Arizona’s first fab will operate it’s leading-edge semiconductor process technology (N4 process), starting. production in the first half of 2025. The second fab will utilize its leading edge N3 and N2 process technology and be operational in 2028. The recently announced third fab will manufacture chips using 2nm or even more advanced process technology, with production starting by the end of the decade. TSMC Arizona will be able to produce semiconductor wafers for its valued customers using the most advanced process capabilities in the country."
Not just chips, but across the board, supply chains are centered around Asia, and within Asia, the bulk of the majority of world's industry forms a densely interlinked network. The generation currently in power in the West will spend the rest of their tenure coming up with fancy ways to pretend to their publics that this isn't the case. It's just as well.
So the Iranians informed Turkyië, UAE, and other countries of the attack, 72 hours in advance. Turkyië, and others, invariably notified the US and Israel in turn. Couple that with the flight time of the drones (3-4 hours), Israel and friends had plenty of time to spool up their radars, missiles, and battle plans. Despite all that, four sites (military, not civilian) were hit, without casualties. Not to mention that the sites hit were involved in Israel's attack on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus. That tells me: the drones and cruise missiles were pawns, and the ballistic missiles were the true weapons of choice. Israel's battle plans and systems are crap against second tier ballistic missiles. See also Ukraine.
China would be better off blockading Taiwan by sea and air to restore Taiwan. No reason to kill their own people. Many people I've had dinner with in Taipei and Kaohsiung believe reuniting with China proper is inevitable, and several say desirable.
I think it's more likely China's going to choose a "kill the chicken to scare the monkey" strategy. Inflict a devastating defeat on the Philippines, the Taiwanese will think twice about seeking official independence. That country's military impotence and historic close ties with the United States make it the perfect victim.
KBZ , inside scoop. The locals have a preference for China over the empire, interesting
120 ballistic missiles launched, 4 impacts, no damage.
Yup, I'd buy a system like that in a heartbeat
To the contrary, the lessons learned from the Iranian retaliatory strike against Israel last weekend is that ballistic missile and hypersonics can penetrate Israeli A.D. particularly when camouflaged in a swarm of cheap drones. A couple rounds of these kind of attacks will deplete Israel and US supplied A.D. forces, just as Ukrainian forces have been depleted the same way by the Russians. Especially so since Israel and Taiwan are very tiny landmasses. Overnight Israel has lost the threat of nuclear annihilation and Iran has gained a Mutually Assured Destruction capability. This is a real game changer. It's just gonna take a little while for this baleful reality to sink in. Just as it's taken a little while for the West to realize that their Project Ukraine is being annihilated before their very eyes by the Russians and they are unstoppable hypersonics.
Why does America - sorry, I mean China - want to control everything in the Caribbean - sorry, I mean South China Sea?
Does not matter. You kill them when they approach your airspace. At 150 km radar won't see them either.
Perhaps the US should worry about its own domestic issues, such as:
The biggest deficit in a peace time.
Overblown government budget that keeps the economy alive using debt.
olf infrastructure
dying manufacturing sector
declining life expectancy (only Western country in the world that manages to accomplish that)
a divided nation
a rotten health care system
increased poverty and a shrinking middle class
a broken education system
unrestrained military industrial complex
senators and congressmen profiting from stocks in various companies
an unleashed secret service apparatus worse than the KGB.
Perhaps it's time to leave Taiwan be before it ends like Ukraine....just perhaps.
Those aren’t bugs, those are features in late stage Empire in an age of decadence.
We're (slowly) turning around infrastructure and manufacturing.
I'm sick of our non-stop wars and the trillions of dollars we pour into our military that goes light years beyond what's needed to protect our shores at home. The rest of it is pure hegemony. Let China rule the world if that's its intentions. It will be their downfall like ours. I oppose our proxy wars in Ukraine and Israel and oppose the proxy war over Taiwan that we are working so hard to provoke. They are foreign countries that have no impact on our daily lives. The U.S. backed the corrupt Chiang Kai-shek in a civil war against Mao. As Mao consolidated his victory the Nationalists fled to Formosa. Before and during the civil war, Formosa was a part of China. If Taiwan wants to remain independent (It did not become a democracy until 1996) it will have to do the diplomacy or fighting for itself.
Bently, not realistic, not a chance and completely naïve, but I am in 💯 % agreement with you and I believe the current situation is nothing less than treason against America and the interests of her people.
I hope our author weighs in on my thoughts
With China's industrial capability, in such a scenario we are talking about thousands of drones and hundreds of ballistic missiles, even with the best coordination and assistance, the situation is extremely difficult and the impact on Taiwan's economy will likely be catastrophic in the long term. It's the kind of threat that can't be tackled without strikes on mainland China. I don't know if this is a step that the West is willing to take or pay
The Iranian attack was carefully pre-announced, calibrated and targeted to make a point and test Israeli defenses, while not doing enough damage to start a major war, which the Islamic Republic clearly doesn't want.
The primary lesson I think we can take is that if the Iranian attack had been several times as heavy, Israel might have really suffered some serious damage. You can be sure that the People's Republic has taken note of that and will scale their plans accordingly.
Most of the drones seem to have been shot down by aircraft, so did not deplete the anti-ballistic missile defenses. There are numerous IDF videos showing this.
Iron Dome is for short range threats only, under 40km I believe, and doesn't seem useful for Taiwan. They need a longer range defense like David's Sling, with 70 - 300km range.
The IDF denied a C-130 was hit. Even if it was, this would have been pure luck as the Iranians seemed unable to target that precisely.
Taiwan is very close to China. Their airspace can very easily be flooded with cheap drones. As you correctly note, shooting down drones with missiles is expensive, but Iron Dome is the cheapest interceptor missile out there ($54K compared to other alternatives around $1 million each). David's Sling is designed for intermediate threats.
Taiwan is about 150km from the Chinese mainland, beyond Iron Dome range
This is a primer for the requirement for directed energy weapons for air defense. The low cost per kill combined with unlimited (as long as the weapon is powered and cooled) engagements. Systems like Iron Beam and the Navy’s weapon systems could be manufactured by the Taiwanese to fill the gap.
If an attack was imminent, a spoiling attack against the Chinese launchers would cripple the rocket forces.
A reasonable and timely analysis. It would be nice if someone in power listened. Thanks.
Me too. Thank you.
Stephen, is it true that Iran's attack cost around USD50m, and Israel's defense around USD1.3billion? Is there some way to cheapen the cost of defense?
I heard the US cost was more than $1 billion, but it may also have included some of the other Houthi stuff.
Some people online are claiming that Iran and it's proxies could beggar Israel by launching less expensive attacks which need to be countered by very expensive defense strategies. Is that realistic? Wouldn't/couldn't Israel just destroy something very expensive or costly in Iran?
There is an asymmetry especially with drones. I think any further Iranian attacks will involve direct attacks on Iran, so the advantages are outweighed by the consequences.
You don't seem to understand the point of war
Among all the MSM tropes, I haven't seen answers to some basic questions about the Iranian response to Israel's curiously timed consular attack (on what was technically Iranian territory).
Iran invented chess a while ago, and their actions tend to be strategically coherent.
A calculated provocation must have been planned by Netanyahu to provoke an Iranian response, after Iran had signalled and moved very clearly to suggest they (like Hezbollah) would prefer for various reasons to avoid escalation.
They could not do nothing, and a symbolic reaction, carefully calibrated and announced well in advance, on military infrastructure linked to the Damascus attack was not remotely surprising.
But what I miss in the MSM is any attempt to carefully read the details of the attack.
The airfield in the Negev whose defence was penetrated, according to some reports by hypersonic missiles, is the main base for Israels's most advanced planes, including those involved in the Damascus attack.
I've read that missiles also hit the Northern intelligence hub in the Golan, presumably responsible for framing the attack.
As well as satisfying the Iranian public's and Arab neighbours' (and their 'streets' or public's) need for an appropriate reaction, the Iranian response invited by Netanyahu also seems to indicate that, like the Israelis in their previous sophisticated targetings, the Iranians were making a strategic statement more than a 'failed attack'.
"We know how and where our enemy operates, and we know how to hit them harder if that in turn becomes appropriate."
With Biden refusing American assistance in any further Israeli attack, while guaranteeing defence (except perhaps against hypersonic attacks without warning) that leaves the beleaguered Netanyahu in quite a tough place.
"Your move", now says Iran - and maybe like a chessplayer they're thinking a few moves ahead.
Israel is trying to drag America into a full-scale war with Iran in order to fulfill the vision of the greater Israel and also displace Palestinians to Jordan and Sinai. Persia must balance a difficult situation, and at the same time deal with its internal problems
This simply is not true.
Why?
Stephen - many thanks once more for your technical analysis... but I still don't find your dismissal of the Red Peril in Eastern Europe consistent with your concerns about the Yellow Peril and the Middle East.
I am not sure there is a red peril in Europe.
Me neither:-)
And I'm not as sure as you about a Yellow Peril further east... except for some American business.
And I know we'll never agree about Israel.
What yellow peril in the middle east? You sound like you own the world and are some kind of racist from the 19th century? What kind of readership is on this sub stack?
You obviously did not read the article. Your comments make no sense.
In any coming war, he who runs out of air defense first, loses.
Given the Chinese proclivity towards ramping up the production of anything very very fast, Taiwan does not have much of a chance.
Your assumption appears to be based on a solely defense paradigm. However, if part of defense is offense then the equation changes.
Not entirely, but I do assume that drones, specific air-borne drones, will be the weapon of choice for both sides. When one side runs out of the ability to down the enemies drones, its all over.
The Americans will in all likelihood be militarily humiliated by China later this decade. The sensible action for the US at this time is to stabilize the relationship, accept that Taiwan will be lost, and get to work reindustrializing the US.
The impact of Chinese high end industry will be like a tsunami hitting a cardboard outhouse. The tsunami will start smashing us toward the end of this year and will be wave after wave, relentless, destroying industry after industry. We have no time to fantasize about defending Taiwan.
I suggest you visit Taipei and tell them.
Rule #1 of effective strategy is to understand limitations, and not just in the present. What will our future limitations be? China's industrial capacity is spooling up at a rapid clip, and the opposite is the case in the US. Every day that passes is one where the US is now less likely to prevail in a war with China in & around Taiwan or the SCS.
From what I understand, the USA has outsourced essentially all of its micro chip manufacturing to Taiwan, which would be lost if it cedes Taiwan to China. Unless something is done to change this beforehand, it would be disastrous to the US for Taiwan to fall to Red China. China wants the micro chip industry too because theirs is substandard, also from what I understand.
Some of the high end AI, graphics and microprocessor chips are made in Taiwan. This is the case for NVIDIA's AI processor. The US does not yet have foundries that can produce chips with feature sizes down to around 3 or 4 nm
Intel foundry is opening up for 1.8nm process (as are TSMC foundries)
https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/eda/article/21283223/electronic-design-intel-foundry-open-to-the-world
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/foundry/process.html
It does not say TSMC is doing the same as Intel in the US. I don't think so. The Intel project is still in the future and is not guaranteed to be successful (that is to say, it has a lot of risk, since Intel is not experienced in this tiny feature sizes). I hope Intel can do this as it is important for national security, but we have to wait and see. (The US is subsidizing this in a big way, which suggests Intel would not have done this without government help, and that is, truthfully, a bad omen. The last time we subsidized semiconductors it was a waste of billions.)
Wonder why TSMC is moving some operations to Arizona
The US asked them to do it, but the most advanced capability is not being moved.
"but the most advanced capability is not being moved."
Doesn't that undermine the stated purpose of this?
Regardless of the official position, this smells like another corporate welfare scheme where plenty of money finds its way back to political campaigns, book and lecture deals, board seats and contracts for friends and relatives, etc..
TSMC's N4 is already EUV, the most advanced production mode in the world (SMIC and Huawei hope to reach 5nm in China next year): 'part of the US goal to onshore semiconductor manufacturing'.. though they started rather late.
Intel has iust reached 4nm, though their 'Meteor Lake' or Core Ultra design is actually a composite of one Intel 'tile' sitting on four TSMC tiles or subchips.
good point
Anyway, the bottom line is as TSMC says 'to strengthen US national economic competitiveness', since EUV chips down to below 2nm are the 'picks and shovels' of AI, which is to the second phase of the Third Industrial Revolution (based on ITC) around 2000 what railways were to the second phase of the first revolution 200 years earlier.
This really goes deeper than kickbacks.
Kickbacks are more important in 'defense', and the key issue over Taiwan is probably more economic than military defense, though the two get pretty mixed up (DOD is tor example desperate to have the most advanced chips, and America always needs a boogeyman, whether the devil in 1619, or the Red Peril transitioning to Yellow Peril now).
"As one of TSMC’s advanced fabs, TSMC Arizona will play a vital role in the U.S. government’s goal to onshore semiconductor manufacturing and strengthen national economic competitiveness. TSMC Arizona’s first fab will operate it’s leading-edge semiconductor process technology (N4 process), starting. production in the first half of 2025. The second fab will utilize its leading edge N3 and N2 process technology and be operational in 2028. The recently announced third fab will manufacture chips using 2nm or even more advanced process technology, with production starting by the end of the decade. TSMC Arizona will be able to produce semiconductor wafers for its valued customers using the most advanced process capabilities in the country."
(TSMC announcement a few days ago)
TSMC in my view does not intend to transfer its best technology abroad.
Well... they just announced their third Arizona fab using technology so advanced it doesn't yet exist, even on paper (so to speak).
With respect, I think your view is clouded.
Not just chips, but across the board, supply chains are centered around Asia, and within Asia, the bulk of the majority of world's industry forms a densely interlinked network. The generation currently in power in the West will spend the rest of their tenure coming up with fancy ways to pretend to their publics that this isn't the case. It's just as well.