Armed with newly-acquired satellite images from a commercial satellite, defense experts in the US refuted previous estimates of China's air power threatening Taiwan Friday, calling the estimates vastly overstated.
They also questioned the notion that there is an impending military crisis in the Taiwan Strait.
"Our conclusion is that China's air power is a lot less than previously thought" with regard to Taiwan, said Charles Ferguson, director of the Nuclear Policy Project at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
At a press conference in Washington on Friday, FAS scientists were joined by experts at the Center for Defense Information (CDI) to deliver a report on images made by the Ikonos satellite, owned by Colorado-based Space Imaging Inc.
The images can distinguish objects on the ground as small as one square meter.
The group claimed the images proved there was "no crisis in the Taiwan Strait," adding that the passage of the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act -- which they claimed challenges China with a "de facto" US alliance with Taiwan -- would actually create one.
Significantly, the report also noted that China's numerical superiority over Taiwan in terms of warplanes in a conflict situation was only 3:1.
These results challenge previous estimates that Beijing's air power outnumbers Taiwan's by a ratio of 10:1, putting Taiwan at a massive disadvantage.
The group did not deny that China has many more planes than Taiwan. But it points out that airfields within operational range of Taiwan -- 600km -- only have bunkers for some 1,200 aircraft. While more could possibly be accommodated but this would be both risky and time consuming.
Only 1,200 aircraft within operational range of Taiwan would reduce China's numerical air superiority to a 3:1 ratio.
Factoring in the inferior quality of China's aircraft compared with Taiwan's, FAS and Center for Defense Information (CDI) analysts concluded that China was unlikely to achieve air superiority over Taiwan.
"The present and foreseeable missile strength of the PLA is inadequate to inflict significant damage on the military forces and economic infrastructure of Taiwan," said retired Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, also the CDI's vice president.
He said that although China enjoys numerical air power advantage over Taiwan -- commonly accepted as being between 3,500 and 4,000 combat aircraft against Taiwan's 450 -- he argued that the limited support and repair capabilities at its air fields as shown in the images were unfavorable for the PLA.
"The modernization process is so slow that, by the year 2005, the Chinese air force will only have about 10 percent of their aircraft with late Cold War capabilities," Carroll said.
"By contrast, the Taiwanese aircraft are much more capable, the pilots better trained and with superior logistic support."
Without air dominance, any thought of an amphibious assault would be abandoned, Carroll said.
"The PRC cannot achieve amphibious assault capability against Taiwan without a major expansion of its Navy -- at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 to 15 years," he concluded.
The available satellite images also showed that while saber-rattling rhetoric and rumors of military maneuvers were rife at this time, several of the nearest Chinese military airfields to Taiwan had bunkers that were not being used, suggesting that the People's Liberation Army Air Force in southeastern China was far from up to to strength.
Nicholas Berry, senior analyst of CDI Asia Forum echoed Carroll's viewpoints, saying that the PRC, however it used its missile advantage, could not quickly bring Taiwan to its knees because it lacked the ability to conduct an airborne assault on a harbor or a airfield, nor did it possess a credible amphibious assault capability.
Others, however, such as Kenneth Allen, senior associate of the Henry L. Stimson Center, argued after the briefing that the conclusions drawn were too narrow.
He said that if China decided to attack Taiwan, it would involve a multi-faceted conflict using missiles, as well as both naval and air engagement, and that all such factors needed to be taken into account.
He also argued that the key point was not how many planes China has, but also training -- and that the PLA has in the past 10 years been stepping up both its amphibious invasion and missile training.
Allen said that although debate was likely to continue within the intelligence community, he did not believe the images being brought to light revealed any surprises either to PRC or to Taiwan.
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