Since last year, Dongsha Island has served as a strategic throat in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and the Western Pacific Ocean, and has become a focal point for the open and covert struggle between the military forces of the mainland, Taiwan, and the United States. Recently, PLA military aircraft have continued to cruise the southwest airspace of Taiwan Island, and have been exposed to use unmanned aerial vehicles to circumvent Dongsha Island for reconnaissance missions; The Taiwan military not only restarted the construction of the runway of Dongsha Airport, but also confirmed for the first time that a large number of "Kestrel" rockets were deployed on the island.
<h1>First, the expansion of the airport is intended to enhance the strategic delivery capacity</h1>
With an area of 1.74 square kilometers, Dongsha Island is located in the center of the Pearl River Estuary, Hainan Island, Taiwan Island and Luzon Island, and is the main point of the Taiwan Sea, the South China Sea and the Bashi Strait. At present, the island is garrisoned by the Taiwan authorities' coast guard personnel, about 200 people, and the Marine Corps specializes in training, which can be said to be "marines in the uniform of the coast guard." At the beginning of June last year, the 99th Brigade of Taiwan's Marine Corps dispatched a reinforced company to Dongsha Island to strengthen combat readiness in the name of "relocation training," which will become the norm in the future.
Dongsha Island is a land of projectiles, and the weapons equipped by the garrison forces on the island are all light weapons, which cannot resist the coordinated offensive of sea and air. And Dongsha is about 444 kilometers away from Kaohsiung, the Taiwan Island Barracks, and in the event of an emergency, the transport aircraft is the main carrier platform for "chi aid". To this end, the Taiwan military and the "Coast Guard" have devised a special "operational plan for defending Xinjiang," imagining that when Dongsha is "attacked and occupied," the Taiwan army, navy, and air force will issue a joint attack, of which the Marine Corps and the army's special operations units will immediately form up and take the Air Force C-130 transport plane to parachute into dongsha airfield in about 70 minutes to carry out "reconquest operations."
The island has an airport with a 1500-meter runway that can accommodate C-130 transport aircraft. However, Dongsha Airport has no refueling facilities, no night navigation equipment, no spare runway, the military transport aircraft is limited to 70 passengers, the load is less than 8,000 kg, and the civil aviation aircraft are fewer, and they need to take off and land under better visual conditions. In addition, the airport is close to the lagoon, and there are heavy tides in the daily twilight, and when the typhoon rains, it overflows the part of the airport runway, affecting maintenance and aircraft take-off and landing.
In order to strengthen taiwan's main island's rapid transportation and combat support for Dongsha Island, the Taiwan military has set aside an annual defense budget for the implementation of the airport facilities and barracks facilities, which is currently scheduled to be completed by the end of February 2022. The analysis believes that the focus of the whole construction project is on refueling and maintenance facilities, night navigation equipment, etc.
<h1>Second, the "Kestrel" rockets are used in anti-landing operations</h1>
With the Marine Corps going to Dongsha for "relocation training," the Taiwan military has aimed to cope with the seizure of the island and has equipped the island with twin stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and recently revealed that nearly 300 "Kestrel anti-armor rockets" have been deployed on Taiping Island and Dongsha Island to enhance the coast guard's amphibious landing combat capability.
According to the budget thaw report sent to the legislature by the OceanOgraphic Committee of the Taiwan authorities, the "Kestrel rocket" will be used for anti-boat wave or anti-landing operations, and the main target is the "enemy ship regiment." At present, the number of officers and men who have completed the training has reached dozens.
Developed by Taiwan itself, the Kestrel rocket is an anti-armor weapon for individual soldiers to carry, using optical sights and night vision. In order to carry out different tasks, the rocket has two types of live ammunition, the former mainly targets strong fortifications (bunkers) or buildings, the latter mainly targets tanks and vehicles, shooting range between 150 and 400 meters, and is currently mainly equipped with marines and gendarmes in charge of the Taipei garrison.
It is said that Taiwan's "Coast Guard Nansha Command" has been using "Kestrel" rockets since 2019, while the "Dongsha Command" only transported the "Kestrel" rockets to Dongsha in June 2020, and is scheduled to carry out live-fire drills from April 25.
<h1>Third, jedi stubborn resistance is purely "seeking its own death"</h1>
Different from kinmen, Matsu and other "rock plate type" islands, Dongsha Island belongs to the "reef plate type", the terrain is flat, the average altitude is less than 6 meters, and the highest point is 12 meters above sea level, which is not only riskless, but also convenient for amphibious assault vehicles to grab the beach and land. Although Ji Linlian, a retired admiral and former commander of Dongsha Island, claimed that the defense facilities of Dongsha Island had been underground and strongholdd, in view of the characteristics of building concrete on coral reefs that are easy to leak and easy to disintegrate, the underground project of Dongsha Island is not only shallowly buried, but also does not carry it. If the People's Liberation Army wants to seize control of the island, under the precise strike of naval and air firepower, one hour is enough to solve the problem. The Kestrel rocket with a range of less than 500 meters did not even have a chance to shoot. As for the transport planes coming from the main island of Taiwan, it is estimated that there is no chance to get close to the island.
According to Taiwan's calculation, although there is no chance of victory at the level of island and reef defense, in the usual gray area of attack and defense, the "Kestrel" rockets can effectively cope with the "harassment" of the mainland's "small armed forces" and win time for the island's rush to help. If the mainland intends to seize control of the island, it can exchange space for time, and The island of Taiwan can quickly enter a wartime state, thus depriving the PLA of the opportunity to "surprise attack Taiwan." More importantly, the longer Taiwan will support itself, the greater the willingness of the "allies" to send troops to help Taiwan. Some Taiwan experts have claimed that Taiwan's way of defending the outer islands is not in the deployment of weapons on the islands, but in the military and political preparations of Taiwan's own island; if the mainland fails to resolve the Taiwan issue in a short period of time, it may have "disastrous consequences."
This is an extremely stupid idea. I would like to ask: If the PLA surrounds and does not fight, how will the Taiwan side deal with it? If the PLA blitzed within a limited time, the defensive forces in Dongsha would either surrender sooner or later or be wiped out. In a defensive Jedi like Dongsha, the Taiwan authorities want to rely on a few individual rockets to "frighten" the mainland.