PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

[montyp165]

I would add that before any Chinese beach assault, the Chinese military would almost certainly control the air.

And it's a lot easier to air deploy very large numbers of 50km FPV drones to cover all the coastlines and all of Taiwan's urban areas. And it's economic to use these FPVs to hunt down to an individual Taiwanese soldier.

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I also reckon there would be a lot of small recon units (potentially unmanned) landing on the coastline, whose job it is to act as sensor nodes, draw fire and also force the defender's to expend munitions and also to reveal themselves.

For example, they could start landing $2K robot dogs along the coast, and equip them with cameras to serve as targeting nodes. So you end up with a war of attrition, similar to what we see today in no-man's land in Ukraine, except that China is expending low-cost robot dogs and FPV drones.

And China would have an essentially unlimited supply of these.

Adding some armaments to those robot dogs for anti-materiel work such as automatic grenade launchers would facilitate OpFor attrition as well.

 

[plawolf]

Adding some armaments to those robot dogs for anti-materiel work such as automatic grenade launchers would facilitate OpFor attrition as well.

Or just go Ukraine-mode and strap the biggest explosive payload they could carry without too much performance degradation and you have a basic all-purpose beach clearing unit that can do everything from obstacle clearance to demolitions to anti armour to comical overkill against enemy infantry.

Just imagine swarms of hundreds to thousands of heavy lift drones each carrying two-four such robo dogs in drop racks with waves of loitering munitions, gunship drones and MALE UCAVs providing air support all as the first wave while the manned IFVs are swimming in.

 

[bsdnf]

I would add that before any Chinese beach assault, the Chinese military would almost certainly control the air.

And it's a lot easier to air deploy very large numbers of 50km FPV drones to cover all the coastlines and all of Taiwan's urban areas. And it's economic to use these FPVs to hunt down to an individual Taiwanese soldier.

---

I also reckon there would be a lot of small recon units (potentially unmanned) landing on the coastline, whose job it is to act as sensor nodes, draw fire and also force the defender's to expend munitions and also to reveal themselves.

For example, they could start landing $2K robot dogs along the coast, and equip them with cameras to serve as targeting nodes. So you end up with a war of attrition, similar to what we see today in no-man's land in Ukraine, except that China is expending low-cost robot dogs and FPV drones.

And China would have an essentially unlimited supply of these.

UGVs and robot dogs look great, but they can't actually operate without the remote control of a squad or platoon; for now, you still need boots on the ground to deploy them.

 

[Mar ling]

UGVs and robot dogs look great, but they can't actually operate without the remote control of a squad or platoon; for now, you still need boots on the ground to deploy them.

Agreed. Robot dogs have a very short range, perhaps only a few kilometers, so I'm more optimistic about the unmanned tank. It has a whip antenna several meters long, which allows it to operate from a ship.

 

[vincent]

UGVs and robot dogs look great, but they can't actually operate without the remote control of a squad or platoon; for now, you still need boots on the ground to deploy them.

Depends on how crazy one wants to let the autonomous system run amok. One can set them to attack any human with weapons and any predefined set of vehicles without human permission.

 

[wuguanhui]

PLA apparently not in favor of letting autonomous systems run amok.

 

[montyp165]

PLA apparently not in favor of letting autonomous systems run amok.

If it's a one-way expendable/disposable system much like loitering munitions it's less of an issue than a reuseable one.

 

[Wrought]

Steady incremental pressure is clearly the way to go. Racheting higher day after day, year after year. As noted, it's also very useful for training.

Late last month, Chinese navy ships, including large guided-missile destroyers, were positioned all around

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. The map below shows their approximate positions, which were shared with The Wall Street Journal by security officials in the region. This wasn’t a military drill intended to show force. In 2026, it is an ordinary day.

Each escalation followed a political development Beijing didn’t like, such as the results of Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election and a high-profile American visit to Taipei in 2022, the officials said. Today, five or six Chinese warships surround Taiwan at almost all times, with the count frequently higher as other naval ships make intermittent visits.

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[siegecrossbow]

Did DPP pay for this or are American analysts under Trump completely Jai-Hindified???

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[4Tran]

Did DPP pay for this or are American analysts under Trump completely Jai-Hindified???

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I don't think that American writers need any encouragement to say the things that their readers want to see. It's like how you can constantly find articles about how Taiwan needs to get more drones without the realizations that all drone parts come from China.

Strikes against critical infrastructure, industrial sites, or government facilities are also possible. But they would damage property and kill or injure the citizens that China claims as its own, encouraging international opposition to China’s actions and hardening Taiwanese determination not to surrender.

I'm not sure why this particular mindworm keeps persisting. Why do people think that China is going to keep playing nice even after Beijing decides that it's going to have to be a shooting war?