After Norway started to feel out on a limb in the late 1970s as Soviet power pushed NATO's forward line of defense back to the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap well south of Norway, demonstrating that we could include Norway in our defensive perimeter was important.
So it occurred to me that maybe our Navy could operate closer to China behind the shield of Taiwan's mountains, which conveniently loom over the eastern coast the length of Taiwan:
Technology has changed, and maybe we couldn't hide from sensors today the way we could twenty years ago. But the geography of Taiwan feeling like they are forward of our defense perimeter being pushed back by growing Chinese military strength is very similar to Norway's position back then. Norway at least had the formal pledge of NATO to come to their defense, so Taiwan is even more alone psychologically.
Yet the United States Navy would be in a better position east of Taiwan than west of Norway. Taiwan has better air defenses capable of detecting and shooting at any aircraft flying over Taiwan to reach our fleet; and a navy capable of holding the northern and southern routes around the island against Chinese ships and subs seeking out our ships. Norway's armed forces were not nearly as formidable and had to face an overland Soviet invasion, too. China's fleet isn't as formidable as the Soviet Northern Fleet then, I should add.
To aid the defense of our forward deployed ships, we could airlift air defense systems into eastern Taiwan to help bolster fleet defenses by pushing our anti-aircraft missile envelop further west. Chinese satellites might be able to spot our ships, but the Taiwanese mountains would surely provide a shield against targeting our ships with enough accuracy to shoot at them with conventional anti-ship missiles unless the planes fly over the mountains. Indeed, even the DF-21 using satellite targeting could face additional obstacles if we put ABM systems ashore in eastern Taiwan to bolster ship-based Aegis anti-missile systems.
If we can operate our carriers in a forward secure bastion with ship- and land-based air defenses and with the Taiwanese navy and American subs guarding the northern and southern flanks, our carriers would be within easy range to strike Chinese fleet and transport elements in the Taiwan Strait and provide air support against any Chinese ground units that make it ashore.
This would, if feasible, blunt much of China's efforts to push our fleet east and buy time for China to conquer Taiwan before we can advance closer to China under a barrage of PLA missiles and long-range aircraft with enough strength to intervene in a China-Taiwan war.
I'm assuming that this is something that the people paid to think about these things have in plan form already. (UPDATE: Unless they've thought about it and rejected it, of course.)
