You can't invade Alaska by land. It's still a seaborne invasion and there is a shortage of usable ports in Northeastern Russia. Shipping men and materiel to Russia to load on ships would be very inefficient; better to use Chinese ports with all the required facilities which are close to existing bases. More importantly, you need to have sufficient troop and cargo ships. Preferably they are amphibious because it gives you much more freedom as to where you'll disembark, but they are less space efficient and cost a lot more as well as requiring naval personal to man them. You also need regular naval screening elements to protect them. Due to the distance you'd need aircraft carriers of which China currently has two. Liaoning isn't worth much being capable of only STOBAR operations with limited range and payload. Shandong is a better ship but has the same limitations. Neither is aa match for US carrier aircraft let alone land based aircraft.DaKardii wrote: ↑Wed Jan 06, 2021 5:31 pmThere are two much shorter routes that China can take. It can either invade Alaska (2,200 miles away) using the Russian Far East as a springboard, or the Northern Mariana Islands/Guam (1,600 miles away) using Japan as a springboard. No need to go the long way across the Pacific.Xeraphim1 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 06, 2021 4:57 pm
Honestly, I think you're making a lot of faulty assumptions about what China could/would do. Your talk of borders is frankly kind of silly. The US does not share a border with Japan in any way and only tangentially with Russia. You also need to look at actual capabilities of China. It's navy is improving but is deficient in certain kinds of experience and equipment. It's army may be competent, but without a way to get to the fight it's useless and that's a navy job. It's air force has some good kit, but it lacks the range to attack many of its neighbors. That leaves missiles. If China starts shooting missiles left and right that's inviting retaliation and China has lots a **really** tasty targets.
The Type 071 LPD is the only modern amphibious warfare transport that China has and there are only 8 total. That's a maximum of 6,400 troops. There are three LHDs fitting out or under trials, but that mostly brings helicopters.
The USAF has activated another F-35 squadron in Alaska to go along with the air defense squadrons already there. I don't think the Chinese navy wants to get into battle with them plus additional aircraft could be moved there easily.
Guam has Anderson, a really big base which hosts fighter and bomber aircraft on a regular basis. It's also a major naval base. No invasion is possible without taking them out which would require a major missile attack. That would prompt retaliatory US attacks on PLAN forces and bases sinking many of those ships you need to move troops.
Do some research and you'll see that opposed seaborne invasions are really hard to do especially against a modern state.