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Tiawan Military - Taiwan's military conducts anti-landing drills during the annual Han Kwang military exercise near New Taipei City on July 27, 2022. (Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense via AP)

WASHINGTON - In a pessimistic but realistic 2026 war games scenario, a joint sabotage campaign and information operation helped Chinese military forces land on the shores of Taiwan. Protected against another global crisis, the United States must respond quickly.

Tiawan Military

In this near future, the United States will have some, but not all, of the weapons, units, and ships it needs for this battle. But there is no magic bullet that will solve this invasion in a few hours or days.

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The players gathered around conference room tables on August 5 in the air-conditioned offices of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. . Next to this map is another, outlined in red, showing the Chinese military's view of the conflict.

In another room is a detailed map of Taiwan, where the Red Army is already positioned and moving to take control.

This is the culmination of a week of military exercises involving various retired military personnel, think tank experts and other government officials. The result will be a comprehensive report from CSIS later this year that analyzes the results of 22 iterations of a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Except for one, the Taiwan-only version, the US is heavily involved.

Judges for the game include two MIT doctoral students, a former Navy captain, and Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist at MIT's Center for International Studies and the author of five books and numerous articles on China's military power. Overseeing the project is CSIS Senior Advisor and retired Marine Col. Mark Canzion.

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Some genres included Japan from the start. The Philippines allowed a US base in some iterations, but not others. Game administrators allowed mainland China to attack the United States, but not the others.

During the week, the game always reaches a stopping point where the players know the likely outcome, and almost always during the three-week simulation battle timeline, it comes down to a conflict between US and Chinese ground forces in Taiwan.

On August 5, the US team included Chris Dougherty, a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Programs for a New American Security, and Daniel Rice, an analyst at the Mitchell Institute for Space Studies. Doherty served first with the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment and later as senior advisor to the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development.

The Chinese team consisted of Dr. Nora Benzahel, a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Thomas Greenwood, a retired Marine colonel and research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analysis.

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In the real world, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ended her controversial visit to Taiwan just days before this war race began.

Party officials in the People's Republic of China condemned Pelosi's visit as a provocation. The Chinese government considers Taiwan part of China and fights efforts by other nations to officially recognize the country's independence.

"In response to Pelosi's visit, China will take all necessary measures to resolutely defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity," Chinese Foreign Ministry officials said in a statement.

The variety and sheer number of games gives analysts a robust data set, multiplayer in the Aug. 5 iteration told Military Times. This is one way to go beyond headlines and official quotes to find out what it takes to counter China's ambitions for Taiwan in the foreseeable future.

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Marine Corps Pfc. Kevin Kent, a heavy equipment operator with Marine Wing Support Squadron 171, leads his squadron during a squadron war games competition April 26, 2022 at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan.

In an age of data mining, advanced algorithms, machine learning and endless computer simulations, what is the value of holding an old-fashioned table with a map, game pieces and 20-sided dice?

"I think it helps you get a better understanding of what the strengths and weaknesses of the United States are and (what) the adversary's strengths and weaknesses are," Benzahel told Military Times.

Hearing from various experts on air, land and naval assets and challenges also gives players a deeper understanding.

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"It helps shape your mindset and how you approach problems more broadly," Benzachel said.

In this not-so-distant scenario, four players wage war in a mission that would have catastrophic consequences if it happened in the real world. And playing time is important.

"If you want something important to happen on the field, it happens in weeks or months," said Mark Kanzian, a former Marine, co-creator and sports referee. “What I want to tell people is look at (World War II) Okinawa, it took two months and three weeks and the island on the board is not that big. There are very loose stories about the case being accomplished. If the Taiwanese retaliate, it will take months for China to take it down.

On the US's first turn, the players lost an entire aircraft carrier, even though it was on the board from the opening of "Baseline", but it wasn't the team's choice to keep it where it was. At the start of the week, the US had lost 700 aircraft in the three-week battle.

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None of this led to pretty results, Kanchian said, but the US won in every version.

Leaders assigned to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment hold a multinational war games meeting involving leaders from the United Kingdom, Hungary and the Netherlands during the planning phase while participating in Allied Spirit I at the Hohenfels Training Area in Germany, Jan. 20, 2015. (army)

Doherty noted that war games once dominated the discussion but waned during the counterinsurgency decades of the early 2000s. That was until nearly a decade ago when former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work and former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul Selva wrote a 2015 article on the website "War" calling for a renaissance in war games. on the rocks."

The letter challenged think tanks and military academies to reintroduce war games into their work, pointing to past interwar periods in which wars helped prepare the United States and its allies for major conflicts such as World War II and the Cold War.

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The Marine Corps has stated that it uses war games, which specifically use algorithm-based simulations to run hundreds or thousands of scenario iterations. That data, said Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger, has partially driven many of the key decisions the service has made in recent years to radically transform its force design.

These changes included removing all of the corps' tanks, rearranging artillery units, and even changing the basic structure of its infantry rifle battalions.

But those decisions also caused controversy. More than a dozen retired Marines, many of them generals, argued publicly that the decisions were radical. They wanted to see which of these simulations led to such movements.

Defense media asked the same question. Official Marine Corps responses are based on rigorous analysis that service leaders say was done but largely undisclosed, citing matters of classification and confidentiality.

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Kancian had his own criticism of the movements. Part of the value of the think-tank exercise may be publicity, he told Military Times during a CSIS wargaming event.

A difficult part of the Marine Corps' planning for a war with China is its Marine Coastal Regiment, a unit still experimenting with new weapons systems, formations and employment strategies.

"What assumptions?" Where is MLR? Kanchian said. It is critical information for analysts, journalists and the public to better understand so that the Corps' decisions make sense.

Fortunately in this iteration, the Philippines and Japan did not enter the conflict, but allowed the United States to set up military bases on their territory and use their airspace.

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The Marines' main weapon, the anti-ship missile, cannot fire far enough at a range of 100 nautical miles, making it ineffective for strikes from the Philippines to Taiwan, where Marines could be stranded to access the area around Taiwan. Refused.

"If I'm not in Taiwan, that weapon is basically useless," Dougherty said. The CNAS expert believes the MLR can be effective, but he believes the unit needs a longer-range weapon than the NSM for this type of scenario.

In any case, when the conflict begins, there is a "Chinese shipping forest" around Taiwan. In other games, the Chinese military twice sank an entire amphibious ready group. Twice the MLR ran out of supplies when it reached Taiwan, and Chinese forest fires destroyed its air and sea supplies.

Rice's employer, the Mitchell Institute,

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