When a quick scan of the headline results in a clickbait reaction we should change the title. The words Taiwan, Launches, Missiles, Kill, 28 shouldn't be that close to each other unless the terms are so well known they are parsed without the obvious desired reaction.

WWWIII will be China Vs China.

What does the extra "W" stands for?

For web.

Is this the Web 3.0 I keep hearing about

I will also suck in Japan, South & North Korea, the Phillipines, Australia and the US, resulting in great devastation for all.

New Zealand, too - all those billionaire bunker estates seem really optimistically placed, lately.

If you think covid shortages are bad, imagine a world without factories. The US is capable of devastating Chinese production infrastructure with conventional munitions. There's a non trivial chance we're going to live through (and die in) some apocalyptic level garbage before humanity finally shakes off the last vestiges of 20th century communism.

China has to stop with the encroachment and aggression. If the US reaches effective military production independence, China won't be allowed to take Taiwan, and the world goes tits up.

That is how it will start, anyways. The US will almost certainly get involved, and possibly NATO if things get too dicy.

The US lacks broad-based public support for new wars.

Also, if China attacks Taiwan's semiconductor facilities aggressively and destructively right at the exposition of a conflict, there will be no strong incentive for the US to get involved because its largest interest in Taiwan will have been demolished.

Isn’t it in taiwans best interest to do mutually assured destruction if China does that a like pointing a few missiles at china’s factories?

Your suggestion implies an assurance of destruction, but China has a geographically broad industrial base with countless production facilities. PRC/ROC is not a symmetric confrontation and we have to view the obvious disadvantages of the ROC very clearly.

To my initial point, though...why would the US care about Taiwan in the morning if all of the fabs get destroyed overnight?

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/05/how-to-win-americas-nex...

How so? No NATO countries involved in this scenario.

Nato just extended its frontiers to Hindukush as german minister said. If they found a pretext to invade afganistan (and irak) they will find a reason to invade other countries also.

NATO only responds to attacks on it's members (and even then, only to attacks on its members in certain areas - NZ attacking a US/UK/French base in the South Pacific doesn't count.) However, where it responds to is not limited. NATO said 9/11 was an attack on a member, so they all went into Afghanistan to respond to it.

A quick search and sums about 88% were US, Canada and UK. So saying NATO may create an inaccurate impression of a lot of countries sending a lot of troops

I keep thinking WWIII will start with India vs. Pakistan. And China takes on Taiwan as part of the general chaos.

If Taiwan isn’t trying to project its military force (and it isn’t) instead of a carrier-killer corvette, why not use land based hypersonic missiles as defense against invading forces? Get some sats put up and get ready.

Most conflicts would start with coordinated strikes on known anti-air and anti-ship installations, unless these land based launchers are road-mobile and constantly on the move, they'll be quickly targeted.

A corvette at least has the chance to blend in with a few fishing trawlers and keep moving around to make itself harder to find and take out.

The ships have to live somewhere too. They are not submarines and I think they'd be sitting ducks. Mobile launch vehicles have a better chance of surviving a first strike and retaliating. Russia will likely sell their hypersonics to those that can afford them.

Taiwan doesn't need to protect strategic overseas assets. It doesn't need to go hunt a strike group. It needs to protect itself from invasion.

Ocean is big land is small.

"carrier killer" with a 220 nm anti-ship missile. xD

Is that so funny?

As far as I know, carrier group against many modern sea skimming missiles very much is an open question. CIWS might work at least for the first few but then who knows.

I think the joke is nothing dangerous would be allowed within that range of a carrier during war. Sneaking a corvette within 220 nm of a carrier group just isn’t reasonable.

True. I do wonder what the current effectiveness of the new Chinese carriers? They might not have the support ships to provide an adequate zone of protection.

A submarine could get within 220nm.

A diesel-electric could get a lot closer to a Chinese carrier. More importantly, the distance between Taiwan and China is well under 220 nm so open-ocean surveillance capability isn't particularly meaningful.