DOD Buzz’s Greg Grant reports that “for all the talk about irregular and hybrid warfare, the driving force in the QDR strategic review currently underway is the High End Asymmetric Threat, or HEAT, team.” That would be the folks studying how the Red Chinese will go about keeping the U.S. Navy and Air Force from engaging in a conflict in the Western Pacific — by disrupting communications, destroying runways, and effectively targeting ships and aircraft in the conflict zone. Just by having the capacity to inflict such damage on U.S. forces, the Chinese will alter the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait to their advantage, giving great pause to any administration confronted with the choice of intervening to defend Taiwan or watching as it is gobbled up whole by the mainland. And a new report from the RAND Corporation sees the latter as an increasingly likely scenario. Again, Grant:

It makes the timing and the findings of a new RAND analysis of a full blown Chinese attack across the Taiwan straits all the more interesting. The new report, in typical RAND style, uses sophisticated modeling to simulate a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the 2010-2015 timeframe, including a preemptive ballistic missile bombardment, a cyber assault on the island’s infrastructure and a Normandy style amphibious landing.