Facing the Dragon, 2014

Background Over the past couple of months, internal struggles in China have seen a shift in the political leadership towards a more conservative, communist direction. This has led to a rising tension concerning Taiwan, with threatening rhetoric increasing in recent weeks. With the west only just finished with yet another military intervention, this one in Syria, China feels bold enough to make a military gamble, a long awaited but never expected armed conflict with Taiwan. In recent days the situation has escalated severely, with several armed clashes among ships and also near the Spratley islands. All signs point to China attempting to find an excuse to go to war. The sinking of a Chinese frigate yesterday by Taiwanese vessels returning fire seems to have done it, with China claiming it as unprovoked in the UN security council and demanding measures against Taiwan. The western nations are not buying it and claim to have evidence of Chinese subversion, leaving the UN a divided body. China was banking on a lack of response due to the UN's inflexibility and supposed American war weariness, and although the USA's deployment scope is limited right now, unexpected allies have come to Taiwan's aid, with Japan, Singapore, Australia and Korea all deploying assets. A hastily assembled Rapid Response Force has quickly deployed to Taiwan and is about to begin assisting the Taiwanese in defensive operations. China has lost its planned window of surprise, but political pride proves to be too strong to stop events set in motion, and they hope to be able to still overwhelm the assembled force and quickly force the issue. Scenario Author notes This scenario is not necessarily intended to be an accurate recreation of what a real Chinese attack would look like. It focuses specifically on an air war only aspect, and intends to see how a clash of modern generation fighters might play out. In addition you only control 2 of the 4 FAORs in order to keep things somewhat manageable. You wil