Bret Devereaux

My thinking towards prestige weapons systems is more towards the fact that the defense of Taiwan is almost entirely down to the degree to which they are publicly under our security umbrella. Prestige system sales are a strong signal that they are covered.

A Taiwan which feels itself out of our umbrella will likely make a deal with the PRC, they won't fight it out. No point turning your country into a rubble strewn battlefield for little gain in the long run.

It's one of the many reasons why I feel a lot of the conventional warfare Taiwan scenarios are really kayfabe being pushed for budgetary reasons. "We need more of X, unless Taiwan falls." "If my office doesn't get an upgrade the PRC will roll right through."

The thing is, ideally, you want weapon sales to both demonstrate resolve by showing you will commit resources but you want them to also drive up the cost of PRC intervention. A2/AD and lots of missiles do that better than high-cost, hard-to-sustain prestige systems.

It's a value added question, though. If the PRC has taken the step of deciding on attempting an armed intervention, it means something has gone *drastically* wrong within the Politburo and they're going all in. There's very little added costs will change.

And in that case, A2/AD, mines, missiles and infantry training are going to do a lot more to make any US intervention in the conflict likely to succeed (by there being a military presence we can support there, rather than a fait accompli) than prestige systems.

Which in turn, both reinforces the security umbrella - because it's harder to create that ideal fait accompli - and in the event deterrence fails AND we decide to intervene anyway, are the sort of systems we'd get a lot of value out of.

IMO the umbrella is first and foremost nuclear. It's the same factor as was at play in Europe during the Cold War, where the USSR never didn't have a dominant conventional position. Our conventional forces were purely there to stop a smash and grab.