Couldn't China use their long ranged aircraft to shoot down refuelers to stop American planes in America from coming to China after their island runways are destroyed? Obviously they couldn't come from the west with Iran and Pakistan there, and I don't expect the Indians would be willing to join in the war if the Americans are already losing. Assuming it's a surprise attack with no prior warning.
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
What do you think the first wave of hypersonic missiles' targets on the island are? C & C and sensors (radars of all kinds). All fixed radar systems will be gone in the first wave. J-16D and Harpy-derive suicide drones will roam the sky of the island to do SEAD.
Any mobile radars that dares to emit any signals will receive a HARM missile or a Harpy-derive drone.
ROC forces will be blinded for the rest of the conflict.
As I've stated, the ROC is certainly behind the PRC in missile technology, but that gap isn't quite as vast as some members here like to believe. As I've also pointed out, one of the advantages that the PRC has is its ballistic missile inventory.
Unless China launches a SEAD campaign the likes of which has never been attempted in history, yes a significant chunk of those missiles would be intercepted. But again, it is very unlikely that a hypothetical Taiwan campaign wouldn't start with drones/aircraft/missiles targeting Taiwan's many radar sites, SAM batteries, communications notes, and airbases to "pave the way" for the larger strike package.
I actually agree that China would likely start off a hypothetical conflict with a coordinated attack on Taiwan's radars and SAM batteries. But the discussion was purely a superficial comparison of China's and Taiwan's offensive missile systems.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
And as I stated:
1. That gap is as vast as it gets. One side has DF-41 and DF-ZF. The other side maxes out cruise missiles of questionable reliability.
2. Yeah, that's one of the advantages... that's one hair on a monkey's body.
Right, especially given the fresh lessons from Ukraine, there is little doubt that there would be a overmatch of air defence systems over tactical aircraft, except in the most asymmetric circumstances. The most logical way to degrade AA capabilities is through SEAD, especially knocking out sensor nodes. No doubt PLAAF and PLARF are redoubling down on their capabilities in that regard.
Other recent conflicts also have shown us that even the densest and most elaborate air defences are not immune to saturation attacks. Which PLA would have an advantage of over any opponent in theatre, just counting the available munitions. Even limited survivability platforms like H6 variants would be very useful in that regard. Also you have to take into account potential full sized drones like J-6 conversions, which would make saturation that much easier.
I was going to comment on this. With the current US executive order to impose a 125% tariff on Chinese products, Trump has released yet another knot that has added more unpredictability to the US strategic ambiguity. Trump himself had already threatened to impose tariffs on 100% of Chinese products if China invaded, and now that knot has been untied.
Xi — we are invading to reduce Trump’s China tariffs by 25%.
PLAAF will be actively hunting ROC offensive systems unimpeded by ROC air defenses.
There was no particular post I could see that suggested the comparison was only about offensive missile systems in a vacuum, but it rather appeared to be comparison of offensive missile systems in a conflict scenario.
The Taiwan contingency is gamed out so comprehensively and it is so multi-domain by nature, that single domain comparisons are broadly useless but instead should be system of systems by default.
A superficial comparison of their offensive missile systems directly is about as useful as superficially comparing PLAAF vs ROCAF directly; it indirectly implies (deliberately or not) that such a comparison makes sense to do in the first place.