"What Would Senkaku Fighting Look Like?" Topic

I'm referring to the potential dust up between China and Japan over the Senkaku Island group. Wiki tells me they're small and uninhabited, so taking and holding looks like a chore. Would it be mostly a naval and air fight? Marine landings after all? Opinions?

China will have to take and hold the islands with naval infantry, but it will mostly be an air-sea battle.

Yup, what 28mil said. The winner gets to claim the rocks and the seabed below. I'd hate to be the marine who has sit on those rocks to keep them!

The Japanese Navy would wipe out the PLAN in any serious fight. Which would set up another century of anti Japanese sentiment in China, which more than anything would be a terrible outcome.

Yea, a few naval and air skirmishes, eventually culminating in a larger battle, I suspect.

Marines from both sides will be landed (probably Chinese first, given the rhetoric), since you need a human presence on shore, and some facilities to really press home the 9/10ths possession rule.

Eventually, some sort of outposts and radar/SAM stations will be installed too, in order to aid defense.

Given there isn't a lot of usable land, I suspect most facilities will be built underground, inside the rock of the islands, in tunnels, just like Japan used in WWII.

I imagine Japan will have the upper hand in most engagements, given their equipment quality and training, though possibly not in terms of numbers.

Lurking Japanese subs around the islands will probably run up decent scores, if the Chinese decide to send their vessels into Japanese waters around the Senkakus, or other home islands, and it hits the fan.

It is interesting to note that both China and Russia have increased their aerial incursions into Japanese airspace, with over 800+ incidents in the last year, ending in March.

China created 400+ incursions, and Russia had a substantial number too.

I think the incident frequency overall was up about 30%+ over the previous year, which is pretty significant.

Those islands are decently big, as such go in the western Pacific.

Not sure if they have any fresh water sources, but they are big enough to have been permanently inhabited before WW2. There used to be a dried-bonito fish 'factory' on the biggest, 1900 up until the 1930s.

The USN leases one of the islands as a bombing/gunnery range, and the Japanese government leased another one prior to the outright purchase. I'm not sure if the US island is still leased from the private citizen or the Japanese Government.

Here's a good article, including a force level comparison between Japan, and China. An excellent source for evaluating some rough force ratios.

However, as the author points out, it is somewhat irrelevant, since the US is obligated to weigh in on the Japanese side, and has said it will do so.

Also, China needs to keep a lot of her forces in other areas too, to guard against the Russians, Indians, etc., not to mention its own citizens, so will be able to field far less than her maximum agains the Japanese, should it come to blows.

There is at least a possibility that if the Chinese government feels it necessary a nuclear strike could be used to even the odds should the Japanese start to come out ahead. From there it could rapidly degenerate even further…

Looking at pics of the islands they are on the whole steep sided mountains although there is enough flat land on one of them to build a small base. Basically you land on one and start climbing and when you reach the top you are on a razorback with nowhere to go but down. They have ground cover but hard to tell if it is bush or trees. No real beaches in sight.

Possibly, on the nuke strike, though I suspect that might be unwise, given all the nuclear plants in Japan, and the fact that the Chinese were hopping mad when they discovered Japan still had so much nuclear material recently.

I doubt they would take to kindly to a strike like that, and given their level of industrial sophistication, suspect they could create a few of their own in very short order, if required.

There's a nice, long beach on the one side of the long, sharp-ridged island. The slope quickly rises fairly steeply behind that though.

I think there's another on the smaller, flatter island as well.

I suspect a mix of heavy scrub brush, and small trees.

I doubt they would take to kindly to a strike like that, and given their level of industrial sophistication, suspect they could create a few of their own in very short order, if required.

Japan, you mean? Yeah, they could probably make 1970s tech level nukes in a couple months.

A nuclear strike, even if it was on a disputed island, would DEFINITELY bring the US in, shooting.

If China used a nuke, it wouldn't be on a small, unpopulated island.

And that *really* would bring the US "all-in", Mako. Considering that the US has massive bases on Okinawa and within splash range of downtown Tokyo, applying "instant sunshine" to either would likely be seen as an attack on the US proper.

History has demonstrated that the appearance of an unprovoked attack on the US is *guaranteed* to result in the US jumping in with both feet and all guns.

And since the Chinese Communist Party would like to remain in charge of China, it's rogue-General-leading-military-coup levels of unlikely to happen.