Can the US defend Taiwan from invasion by Mainland China?

 Just in the last week, Fox’s military commentator, retired Army general Jack Keane, said that a recent war game on this subject lead to a decisive victory for China and a defeat for us. 

I have to wonder about this.  The Taiwan Strait is 120 miles wide and blue water, deep enough to float aircraft carriers (or any other kind of ship).  China has to get a sizable army across the strait, land the troops on the island of Taiwan, and keep them supplied during the fighting.  Taiwan has an army with a decent supply of up to date American equipment.  China will have to fight hard to gain control of the island. 

   Our best bet to defend Taiwan is to sink the Chinese invasion force as it crosses the strait.  This will start off as an Air Force battle.  China has a lot of airbases on their side of the straight.  We have a dozen aircraft carriers, of which maybe 9 are operationally ready.  The other three are likely in US shipyards for one sort or another of heavy duty work and thus unavailable.  Each carrier has maybe 90 aircraft on board.  The carriers could be stationed on the far side of Taiwan to make it harder for China to strike them. The carrier aircraft can fly right across Taiwan in a matter of minutes.  The Air Force could fly in a lot of planes to Taiwan to fight from Taiwan’s air fields. That ought to give us 800 Navy aircraft and 500-800 Air Force aircraft. 

   China has maybe 1700 combat aircraft.  Maybe half of them are as hot as USAF fighters and the other half is old, slow, and easy meat for USAF F-22s and F35s.  This info comes from pontification at various Internet sites.  These sites tend to denigrate the Chinese Air Force and say nice things about USAF. I don’t know who would win, before a head to head air battle between them.

   The object of such an air battle is for one side or the other to obtain air superiority,  By which I mean to ability to fly low performance (at least by fighter standards) bombers out into the Taiwan strait to sink Chinese ships carrying troops to invade Taiwan.   Other angles, before the air war settles out, US submarines, lurking underwater in the strait of Taiwan torpedoing any surface vessel that needs it.  Chinese aircraft probably cannot sink subs that stay submerged.  No problem for nuclear subs, not impossible for conventional diesel subs.

   So, I can see American air and sea power keeping the Chinese ships under control and off Taiwan landing beaches.  I think this will defeat a Chinese attempt to take over Taiwan.  I don’t know how General Deane’s war game worked and why it showed a Chinese victory.