![]() Passed Inspection: Innovative game play, high replay value, excellent AI.įailed Basic: Austere graphics, somewhat clunky interface.įlashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm (henceforth Red Storm) is a tactical-level (individual vehicle up to battalion-sized units) game set during a hypothetical war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in Europe in the 1980s. Price: $49.99 digital download $64.99 boxed edition and digital download. “At the strategic level,” Sullivan writes, “whole-of-nation resilience will take on increasing importance.Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm By Patrick Bakerįlashpoint Campaigns Red Storm. If the simulation is accurate, America needs to respond fast to a Chinese attack, and bolster Taiwanese defenses before invading forces can lay waste to Taipei. The lesson, for the United States, is that infrastructure-and the ability of government, industry and everyday people to adapt to its failure-is critical. “The cyber-attack, which admittedly relied on simple rules, likely decided the fight by preventing the early flow of reinforcements to the theater,” according to Sullivan. The decision point, however, occurred weeks earlier when Chinese hackers disrupted communications in the United States. In Sullivan’s simulation, Taiwan’s surrender ultimately is a political decision that runs counter to the strictly military dynamics on the ground around the capital. “The significant damage inflicted by the PLA on Taiwan, the utter destruction of Taipei in the fighting around the capital and the capture of several leading political leaders compelled the Taipei government to capitulate,” Sullivan writes. Meanwhile separate naval groups-a joint U.S.-Japanese group north of Taiwan and a joint U.S.-Philippine one to the south-succeed in retaking the islands China captured, albeit at tremendous cost.įor all its success, the allied counteroffensive is pointless. It’s been two weeks since the first rocket fell.Īmerican paratroopers land on Taiwan and, with strong air support, start chipping away at the Chinese lodgement. Once the Americans sort out their hacked logistics, U.S. The sheer scale of the violence in Taipei is key to China’s eventual victory. “They converged forces, cleared many of the surrounding suburbs and launched their first attacks on the capital.” “There was nothing elegant about the drive toward Taipei,” Sullivan writes. Taiwanese forces slow the Chinese advance, but at the cost of the city. For a few days, the battered allied forces that already were in place on day one of the invasion must fight alone. Perhaps most critically, Chinese hackers cripple infrastructure in the United States, delaying by several critical days the mobilization of significant American reinforcements. and Japanese bases, knocking out Kadena air base in Okinawa-the Americans’ main base for tactical warplanes in the region-and destroying the forward-deployed B-2s on the ground in Guam.Īllied air power is reeling as Chinese marines storm ashore at an unexpected beachhead-not along Taiwan’s southwestern coast, as the allies long anticipated, but farther north near the city of Hsinchu. The island-seizures on the Philippine and Japanese frontiers all but guarantee that Tokyo and Manila will support Taiwan’s defense.Ĭhinese rockets rain down on U.S. Chinese marines seize the Taiwanese island outpost Penghu and also occupy the Paracel, Spratly and Ryuku island groups. The Pentagon deploys air-defense systems, B-2 bombers and elements of the 82nd Airborne Division to the western Pacific in anticipation of a Chinese invasion. intelligence community sees through the ruse. In the game, China partially obscures its mobilization for war by organizing naval exercise that provide cover for the invasion force. While there’s no way to know for sure whether Sullivan’s Taiwan scenario is likely in the real world, it just might capture some of the actual dynamics of a conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Air Force is retreating from the F-35 stealth fighter program, it’s in part because a recent war game showed the short-range plane isn’t terribly useful for fighting China. The Pentagon runs lots of war games, including classified high-fidelity games that have revealed deep flaws in the U.S. Journalists use them to illuminate the flaws in certain weapons. government report on America’s defeat in the three-week war for Taiwan that, in Sullivan’s fictional depiction, comes to a bloody conclusion in the fall of 2023. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, describes his Next War: Taiwan play-through in a paper that he frames as a fictional U.S. Sullivan, an intelligence official at the U.S.
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