PLA strike strategies in westpac HIC

[Wrought]

I don't think subsonic stealth plane is that big of a threat to current day China. First of all, stealth is only going to get more and more useless as sensor technology and AI gets better and better.

Radars are progressively getting more and more powerful these days. So they detect smaller object from longer distance. Moreover, AI is getting more smarter, which means even small radar signatures can be identified as a stealth bomber with pattern recognition.

Then there is detection using IR and visible light itself. No amount of stealth technology is going to work against that, unless you have technology to make planes transparent. Due to AI and extreme high powered camera type detection systems, you will have ability to detect objects 100s of KMS away.

Moreover, China will have enough radar, planes and ships to essentially forward deploy and act as forward observers during wartime. So, any B-21 that comes close will be detect way before they come anywhere close to the mainland.

I am not even counting satellite detection since they could be destroyed in a full scale superpower war. But they are an option too.

I think all of these factors will make B-21 detection so much easier that there will be marginal difference between a B-21 detection range and a B-52.

If China can keep B-21 at a distance then it can only launch very large hypersonic missiles to cover the long distance. That will limit how many missiles it can carry in its internal bay. A B-21 that can only carry 1-2 standoff hypersonic missiles is not a big of a threat to China. If they try to carry smaller subsonic missiles, well those missiles are easily intercepted.

You are completely wrong about stealth. It does not become useless as sensors proliferate and networks improve. It simply becomes the new minimum baseline of survivability. The same systems which detect low-observable signatures will detect big open targets even farther away. The same algorithms which parse minimal signals from background noise will find loud obvious emitters even faster.

It's a spectrum, not a binary. Stealthy platforms are more survivable than non-stealthy ones. Everything that makes stealth less useful makes non-stealth useless. Today, stealth is a strength. Tomorrow, stealth is a requirement.

 

[SunlitZelkova]

Just read the article.

In a way I'm pretty glad that all those USAF Colonel quacks (and have you noticed, all the quacks who write opinion pieces are all Colonels) are all retired. Because what the article, and by extension, its writer, is advocating for is unlimited conventional strikes on Chinese mainland.

To quote: "It is not enough for the U.S. to simply prevent the PLA from seizing ground on the shores of Taiwan. That by itself will not guarantee victory. A war-winning strategy must also deny sanctuaries to the PLA—including sanctuaries on China’s mainland—and enable U.S. forces to degrade China’s ability to launch long-range air and missile salvos that could cripple U.S. joint force operations in the Pacific. ...

History has repeatedly demonstrated the imperative to deny operational sanctuaries that enable adversaries to husband resources, produce war materiel, train replacement warfighters, secure military leadership, and protect their lines of communication. Because freedom from attack is crucial to enable the freedom to attack, denying sanctuaries is an essential element of any successful warfighting strategy."

Anyone with half a brain-cell would know that such proposed actions will result in nuclear war.

This isn't that bizarre. The US military has always argued for massively attacking China proper whenever there has been a threat of conflict between the two:

1. Korean War (MacArthur and other hawks wanted to use nuclear weapons on targets in Manchuria)
2. Second Taiwan Strait Crisis (JCS informed Eisenhower that if it came to war, there would be no way to defeat China without using nuclear weapons on the mainland)
3. Vietnam War (When considering a potential invasion of North Vietnam, planners believed that if China intervened to defend Vietnam, there would be no way to defeat the intervention without using nuclear weapons)

They are just repeating the same trope, but with conventional weapons, because they are unable to make the mental adjustment needed to realize China no longer has a Soviet-style AD network based on HQ-2s.

They are still right though. Attempting to defend Taiwan without attacking bases on the mainland would akin to Germany invading the USSR without attacking industry east of the Urals. But the US just isn't taking the challenge of striking the mainland seriously.

I don't think it would come to nuclear war because there is no way the CPC and PLA regard strikes on the mainland as something "forbidden" or "unacceptable." The entire point of expanding the PLARF's conventional strike capability was to destroy the bases in the 2IC necessary to launch those kinds of attacks; they know the US is likely to do that kind of thing. Tomahawks or JASSMs appearing over Shanghai isn't going to generate the same effect a Trident II heading for Moscow would.

 

[tamsen_ikard]

You are completely wrong about stealth. It does not become useless as sensors proliferate and networks improve. It simply becomes the new minimum baseline of survivability. The same systems which detect low-observable signatures will detect big open targets even farther away. The same algorithms which parse minimal signals from background noise will find loud obvious emitters even faster.

It's a spectrum, not a binary. Stealthy platforms are more survivable than non-stealthy ones. Everything that makes stealth less useful makes non-stealth useless. Today, stealth is a strength. Tomorrow, stealth is a requirement.

There is a limit to radar detection range due to curvature of the earth which will not allow even the most powerful radar to detect non stealth planes.

So, if both stealth and non-stealth planes be detected at the same range, is there any benefit to adding more stealth features?

Think of it this way. If battleship armor can no longer protect ships as much as non-armored ship due to advancement in anti-ship missile technology, then there is no benefit to adding more armor and thus militaries can get rid of the extra weight to focus on more important things like missile capacity.

I expect sensor technology to advance much more than stealth technology. So that eventually stealth will no longer be able to provide the benefits of deep penetration as it does now. Then the trend might be to abandon extreme stealth designs and focus on less stealthy design with other characteristics like greater speed or more load capacity or active measures like lasers or kinetic kill interceptors.

 

[gpt]

Just read the article.

In a way I'm pretty glad that all those USAF Colonel quacks (and have you noticed, all the quacks who write opinion pieces are all Colonels) are all retired. Because what the article, and by extension, its writer, is advocating for is unlimited conventional strikes on Chinese mainland.

The US won't attack anything in the mainland or even touch Chinese shipping. Most scenario analysis regarding this conflict focuses on deterring a direct amphibious assault on Taiwan itself, which immediately reduces the scope of the conflict. In a real war, Fort Meade is the entity that is going to do the most damage to China. Hitting each other's infrastructure with bombs and missiles is massively escalatory, but cyberwafare/sabotage has to go through an extra layer of attribution, which makes it acceptable.

 

[AndrewS]

There's theoretically nothing stopping the Chinese from conducting North America patrols with their current fleet of 09IIIB boats, but in reality these missions would be severely undermined by the lack of forward operating bases for servicing and food replenishment, which won't be solved with the introduction of the 09V.

It's only a 12 day transit at 20 knots from China to California, so food shouldn't be the issue.
It'll be everything else, but particularly weapons reloads.
You can imagine the entire VLS be launched in one go and then the submarine has to reload.

 

[Wrought]

There is a limit to radar detection range due to curvature of the earth which will not allow even the most powerful radar to detect non stealth planes.

Which is why you put radars on things that move, like planes and ships.

So, if both stealth and non-stealth planes be detected at the same range, is there any benefit to adding more stealth features?

An exceedingly large "if" which is not true in the slightest. And even if it was true, there is huge value in being detected but not targeted vs detected and targeted. Stealth is what gives you the former.

Think of it this way. If battleship armor can no longer protect ships as much as non-armored ship due to advancement in anti-ship missile technology, then there is no benefit to adding more armor and thus militaries can get rid of the extra weight to focus on more important things like missile capacity.

Terrible analogy; sensors are not armour. The key to sensor fusion is the fusion, the big complicated network of many sensors and compute and so forth which lets you detect otherwise VLO targets. But that big complicated network can also be disrupted across many vectors, and is obviously one of the highest priority targets for the enemy. When that network is fragmented and degraded, even temporarily, a stealthy platform can slip through the gaps. But a nonstealthy platform can't, because any individual sensor picks it up anyway.

I expect sensor technology to advance much more than stealth technology. So that eventually stealth will no longer be able to provide the benefits of deep penetration as it does now. Then the trend might be to abandon extreme stealth designs and focus on less stealthy design with other characteristics like greater speed or more load capacity or active measures like lasers or kinetic kill interceptors.

The benefit of survival is paramount. And stealth is hardly exclusive with speed or size or active measures. It simply means that high-end platforms with all of those features will keep getting more exquisite and expensive.

 

[gelgoog]

They are still right though. Attempting to defend Taiwan without attacking bases on the mainland would akin to Germany invading the USSR without attacking industry east of the Urals. But the US just isn't taking the challenge of striking the mainland seriously.

They aren't because it is pretty much a hopeless task without many hundreds, maybe thousands of nukes. Which would be better off being delivered in something other than the B-21.

To think you can suficiently degrade Chinese manufacturing with conventional bombing is a fool's errand.

 

[tphuang]

They aren't because it is pretty much a hopeless task without many hundreds, maybe thousands of nukes. Which would be better off being delivered in something other than the B-21.

To think you can suficiently degrade Chinese manufacturing with conventional bombing is a fool's errand.

yes, this needs to be understood. Also, keep in mind that majority of China's military production is actually not on the coast, but more to the interior. You need to get through a lot of defense to start actually bombing CAC.

The shipyards are more easily accessible target, but realistically, shipyards aren't going to build ships fast enough to be used in a modern day war. Even degraded shipyard capacity should still be able to repair and service ships.

I can't say the same about US shipyards.

 

[lych470]

There is a limit to radar detection range due to curvature of the earth which will not allow even the most powerful radar to detect non stealth planes.

So, if both stealth and non-stealth planes be detected at the same range, is there any benefit to adding more stealth features?

Think of it this way. If battleship armor can no longer protect ships as much as non-armored ship due to advancement in anti-ship missile technology, then there is no benefit to adding more armor and thus militaries can get rid of the extra weight to focus on more important things like missile capacity.

I expect sensor technology to advance much more than stealth technology. So that eventually stealth will no longer be able to provide the benefits of deep penetration as it does now. Then the trend might be to abandon extreme stealth designs and focus on less stealthy design with other characteristics like greater speed or more load capacity or active measures like lasers or kinetic kill interceptors.

The PLA in general are finding increasingly creative ways to put sensors on drones, satellites, and many other platforms. See the Shenyang WZ-9 Divine Eagle. Theoretically, in the not so distant future the PLA is able to have 24-hour AWACS coverage over entire theatres.

With stealth - stealth is also advancing at a fair pace. When we see planes transitioning from 5th gen to 6th gen, we see more stealth features. Both the J-36 and the J-XDS are tail-less fly-wing designs, because vertical stabilisers are not good for stealth. The Yanks have arrived at a similar conclusion and you don't see vertical stabilisers on their own F-47 concept arts. Instead of abandoning stealth, the trend is to make aircraft more stealthy. (Moment of silence for the GCAP and the FCAS though - it seems like the Europeans can't hack the complex fly controls to make a tailless stealth fighter work. RIP)

Plus, whilst it's hard to change the physical shape of an aircraft, stealth also relies on radar absorbent materials to make the skins and coatings for the planes. Those are easier to iterate and improve. The race between stealth and detection is far from over.