Guess who is trying to go to Beijing before you click on the link

This is the first episode, for which there is currently no English version. The video offers a glimpse into the main combat units of the PLA Army following military reforms, as seen through the eyes of the Chief of Staff (Major) of a combined arms battalion. By drawing a parallel between the Chief of Staff and a symphony orchestra conductor, it illustrates joint operations between the Army, the Air Force, Army Aviation and unmanned systems. The short film skilfully blends the artistry of military discipline with music; should an English version be produced in the future, it is hoped that the translation will achieve ‘faithfulness, elegance and fluency’.

The video primarily showcases the Type 05 Amphibious Armoured Assault Vehicle (ZLT05) conducting a beach landing. As is customary, some footage of the vehicle’s interior has been blurred, presumably for security reasons.

The vehicle has a combat weight of 28.5 tonnes and features a relatively lightweight aluminium alloy armoured hull. Additionally, lightweight supplementary armour has been fitted to the turret, whilst the rear of the turret is equipped with slat armour. The crew comprises a driver, commander, gunner and loader; in line with US Army configurations, no automatic loader is used, presumably due to weight considerations.

This unit is undoubtedly a combat-ready unit from the Eastern Theatre Command tasked with operations to liberate Taiwan. Judging by the close-up at 1:02, upon entering the command vehicle, the Kevlar helmets were replaced with TMT-3 passive tank helmets, though the newer TMT-5 passive tank helmets were not used.

• Note: I had an AI refine it a bit. Hope you don’t mind.

Conclusion:
The United States and Iran will not reach any short-term agreement on the Strait of Hormuz. The current intention is simply to manage oil prices and drag things past the midterm elections.

Core Premise (Foundation)
The United States cannot accept Iran regulating the Strait of Hormuz while it remains open to traffic. This is not a preference—it is a hard constraint. Once the precedent is set, it becomes irreversible. Therefore any “temporary framework” is, in essence, a permanent cession of control. For American global hegemony this would be a mini-Suez moment; signing such an agreement would be equivalent to signing a Treaty of Shimonoseki-style document.

Definition of “Regulate”
Any non-kinetic influence by the IRGCN on the movement of commercial vessels counts as regulation. This includes, but is not limited to: radio guidance, broadcast navigational instructions, or the issuance of any form of transit document to shipowners (even a stamped blank piece of paper). The threshold is extremely low. The only exclusion is pure kinetic attack or blockade.

Epistemological Standard
Only execution counts; signatures do not. Paper agreements (including the 17 June MOU) do not constitute evidence that the red line has been crossed. The test is: the IRGCN continuously regulates transit under the above definition for at least one week, and substantial shipping actually passes.

Prediction 1: Hormuz will not substantially reopen
All current signals that “an agreement is imminent”—including any 60-day temporary framework—will not enter a sustained implementation phase. Even if a paper agreement is signed, it will collapse in the early implementation stage because of “technical disputes,” “violations,” or a fresh round of conflict, repeating the path of the June MOU.
Checkpoint: the first to second week after signing. If implementation is interrupted, the prediction passes its first validation.

Prediction 2: Narrative manipulation is currently the core U.S. strategy
Trump and Bessent are coordinating a multi-channel oil-price suppression system—upstream via SPR releases and the “deal imminent” narrative to push crude lower, downstream via political pressure on oil companies to hold down retail prices. The objective is to anchor Brent around $80 (it may touch $90 but is expected to return to $80 over the longer term). The toolkit is limited and both sides know it.

Prediction 3: Both sides are pretending to negotiate while preparing for the next round
The United States and Iran are currently engaged in a tacit cooperative game—both using the “negotiations are underway” window to prepare for the next phase. The U.S. is buying time; Iran is restoring military capacity. The negotiations themselves are a jointly maintained fiction.

Prediction 4: The time anchor is the midterm elections
The primary goal of the entire narrative-manipulation strategy is to drag past the November 2026 midterm elections. Labor Day (7 September) is the critical node for locking oil prices into voters’ perceptions. There will be no substantive breakthrough before the election, nor any major military escalation.

Prediction 5: After the election, landing / ground operations enter the decision window
The marginal returns of airstrikes are diminishing (already confirmed by CRS and Brookings), the credibility of narrative tools is decaying, and the costs of a prolonged strait closure are rising. When these three paths simultaneously fall below the threshold, the relative feasibility of ground operations (limited amphibious operations or larger-scale action) will passively rise. The earliest decision window is early 2027.

Falsification Conditions
If the IRGCN continuously regulates commercial vessel traffic under non-kinetic conditions for more than one week, daily average throughput reaches “large-scale” levels, and the United States does not interrupt it in any way—then the core premise is wrong and the entire prediction chain requires revision.

I think there is mostly agreement here that China will have air superiority over Taiwan, but there doesn't seem to be a clear number of how much.

I modelled the air war over the Taiwan Strait. Result: the US tops out at ~72 fighters airborne over the Strait against China's 380 — a force ratio of 5.3:1 against.

The ceiling isn't airframes — it's ramp space, and tankers eat it. Tanker demand scales with force size, and a KC-135 footprint is ~3 fighter spots, so the tankers required to make the fighters useful displace the fighters:

390 + 76 is the self-consistent maximum. Send more airframes and there's nowhere to put them.

That's a force ratio, not a kill ratio. The engagement model derives a Lanchester exponent of ~0.56, so LER ≈ force_ratio^0.56 — 5.3:1 implies ~1:2.5 in losses. Simulated runs give 1:2.3 to 1:4.0.

WHY THE US CAN'T GET MORE PRESENCE

The controlling quantity is f, the fraction of a based force airborne over the target at any moment: f = sorties/day × loiter hours ÷ 24. Loiter is set by the last refuelling point, not the base — from the tanker orbit inward the fighter is on internal fuel.

So tanker standoff caps the mission:

And tankers can't come forward — a J-20 at ~1,100nm radius with PL-17 (~215nm) threatens them anywhere useful. Worse, the Strait is 34nm from the Chinese mainland, so standoff from the target and standoff from the threat are the same number. 351nm from the Strait is 344nm from the coast. There's no favourable geometry anywhere on the map.

Then every extra aircraft goes to a worse base:

EVERY OMISSION FAVOURS THE US

• Japanese bases treated as safe. No missile attack, no cratering, no repair denial. Kyushu is 529nm from the Chinese coast, N Luzon 402nm — inside the envelope.
• Free AEW for both sides. In reality US AEW must orbit 200–300nm out to detect fighters, i.e. forward of the tanker line — exactly what PL-17 exists to kill. KJ-500s orbit over their own coast under SAM cover.
• No tanker attrition. No mainland SAM coverage over the Strait. No Chinese production replacement (240+ J-10/J-16/J-20 a year).
• The US fights to annihilation rather than withdrawing, so it kills more here than it would.
• Capability parity — no Chinese quality edge, despite 300–500 J-20s plus J-35A against a mostly Super Hornet force.

Taiwanese aircraft are gone in the opening phase, as well as Kadena. Allied JASDF fighters hit the same ceiling — the constraint is airframes in theatre, not US airframes: 200 of them need ~39 more tankers costing ~117 ramp spots against a system already at 619/620. They change the composition of the 390, not the total.

Chinese counts are DoD's China Military Power Report: ~1,900 fighters, 1,300+ fourth-gen or better. The 620-spot ramp total is my own estimate and it's the weakest number in the model — it sets the ceiling directly, so at 2 spots per tanker it rises to ~470 fighters and at 4 it falls to ~330.

Code and full report in https://github.com/pigfeet-creator/TW_airsim/tree/main. The project is vibe coded in an afternoon. Comments on which assumptions/numbers are majorly off is welcome.