PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

[Bellum_Romanum]

This is hilarious.

Do you understand what makes a military force? It's not the weapons. Any civilian can pick up a gun. A military force requires first and foremost discipline and organization.

Wars aren't won by killing all enemies, they are won by breaking their morale.

Doesn't matter if you have 40,000 or 400,000 civilians picking up arms, without organization and discipline, their morale will be easily shattered.

Morale, will to fight is one of the key centers of gravity that's discussed and taught in western military schools at least based on my readings from many western military defense publications. I don't know if our esteemed members here read military strategy, tactics etc.. but they would have understand and incorporated this very important aspect in war before making such opinions on that matter.

Remember the infamous/famous Col.John Warden's 5 rings theory? (I read his book many moons ago) from Gulf War 1 fame. Highly detested/disliked by Gen.Norman Swarzkopf

 

[HighGround]

This is hilarious.

Do you understand what makes a military force? It's not the weapons. Any civilian can pick up a gun. A military force requires first and foremost discipline and organization.

Wars aren't won by killing all enemies, they are won by breaking their morale.

Doesn't matter if you have 40,000 or 400,000 civilians picking up arms, without organization and discipline, their morale will be easily shattered.

I think it's incredibly naive to assume that people are just going to move on with their lives. I don't even know what your point is.

People can't self-organize?

Insurgents inherently have low morale?

I think these are bad assumptions. My point isn't that there is absolutely going to be an insurgency, or that it will be successful. My point was that there are necessary ingredients for an insurgency to occur in the event of an AR, and that it can potentially be a very serious one. Which is something PLA planners have probably accounted for, but plans have a habit of going awry when they actually encounter the problem they were meant to solve.

I don't think that the chance of a serious insurgency in Taiwan post AR is non-zero.

 

[solarz]

I think it's incredibly naive to assume that people are just going to move on with their lives. I don't even know what your point is.

People can't self-organize?

Insurgents inherently have low morale?

I think these are bad assumptions. My point isn't that there is absolutely going to be an insurgency, or that it will be successful. My point was that there are necessary ingredients for an insurgency to occur in the event of an AR, and that it can potentially be a very serious one. Which is something PLA planners have probably accounted for, but plans have a habit of going awry when they actually encounter the problem they were meant to solve.

I don't think that the chance of a serious insurgency in Taiwan post AR is non-zero.

Just because the chance of something is non-zero doesn't mean it's significant.

As has been pointed out previously, without US intervention, a TW insurgency is utterly doomed. With US intervention, the PLA will not even bother with an occupation TW and instead fight the US directly.

Therefore, either way, a TW insurgency is irrelevant.

 

[Michaelsinodef]

I think it's incredibly naive to assume that people are just going to move on with their lives. I don't even know what your point is.

People can't self-organize?

Insurgents inherently have low morale?

I think these are bad assumptions. My point isn't that there is absolutely going to be an insurgency, or that it will be successful. My point was that there are necessary ingredients for an insurgency to occur in the event of an AR, and that it can potentially be a very serious one. Which is something PLA planners have probably accounted for, but plans have a habit of going awry when they actually encounter the problem they were meant to solve.

I don't think that the chance of a serious insurgency in Taiwan post AR is non-zero.

It's low, but something that the CPC has to prepare for, which I very much do think they do, so at the end of the day, shouldn't be a 'big worry'.

 

[abc123]

The same argument can be said and be applied to your country you support. Your post is highly emotional lacking the supposed geopolitical and geographical know-how and nuanced you demanded to people like myself - remember the 4 new U.S. bases in the Philippines debate.

The war in Libya by NATO was not wargamed where somehow Libya and its meager forces would have been able to credibly withstand the western might; you're making that one up. The wargame against Iraq stating that it would have problems post-Saddam did materialize unless you're forgetting the fact that the war has been branded by every credible foreign policy analyst as a strategic blunder in American Foreign policy. Trillions of $$$ wasted for what exactly and what was the objective? WMD or freedom and democracy? How's that working out?

Comeback with a reasonable and educated rebuttal and not just this half-baked flimsy argument that's easily refuted.

Well, I obviously meant on a political debate, before or during these operations, not on real wargames, because it was obvious that US can defeat Iraq or Libya. But, politicians, whether elected or high ranking military members, were thinking that post-invasion will be easy. Why? Because they wanted so. It fits in their ideological narrative. Reality proved them opposite.

On the other hand, I'm pretty certain that the Russians pretty thoroughly wargamed conflict with Ukraine during last 30 years. And I'm also pretty sure that their games didn't show this what we can see for last year plus.

I hope that you do not expect that I will give you sources for these wargames.

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is- the reality will show. Maybe it will be so, maybe not. It isn't good to be too certain, about anything.

 

[supersnoop]

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Womp womp womp

That's quite the big investment from Washington if F-16V are going to Kiev instead.

I don't think the F-16V will be going to Kiev.
The issue is simply cost. Taiwan paid real money for the fighters, Ukraine would not.
I think the US sanctions on Chinese companies have been interfering with the supply chain much worse than they anticipated.
In addition, due to the Ukraine war, the US must resupply themselves before worrying about Taipei

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

Interesting observation by Goldstein.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1660686816368902146

That's one chonky ship, lol.

Personal comment -
For the Taiwan scenario, a key capability improvement for the MCM ships and boats of the PLAN and the CCG should be the capability to launch and operate multiple UUVs that can scout and patrol forward stretches and zones of underwater and seabed for any hidden dangers to allied warships that are following behind, especially:
1. Enemy UUVs;
2. Smart seabed mines that can be triggered by acoustic, magnetic and pressure signatures of passing warships (

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); and
3. Underwater torpedo batteries.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Interesting observation by Goldstein.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1660686816368902146

That's one chonky ship, lol.

Personal comment -
For the Taiwan scenario, a key capability improvement for the MCM ships and boats of the PLAN and the CCG should be the capability to launch and operate multiple UUVs that can scout and patrol forward stretches and zones of underwater and seabed for any hidden dangers to allied warships that are following behind, especially:
1. Enemy UUVs;
2. Smart seabed mines that can be triggered by acoustic, magnetic and pressure signatures of passing warships (

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); and
3. Underwater torpedo batteries.

one problem will indeed be Taiwanese bought mines like QUICKSTRIKE. Unlike those deployed by a far away foreign power, they will be able to be deployed right up to their own coast which will be hard to both detect and sweep. That makes it hard to land amphibious forces where there are mines. Even unmanned MCM ships can't just be thrown away.

 

[HighGround]

one problem will indeed be Taiwanese bought mines like QUICKSTRIKE. Unlike those deployed by a far away foreign power, they will be able to be deployed right up to their own coast which will be hard to both detect and sweep. That makes it hard to land amphibious forces where there are mines. Even unmanned MCM ships can't just be thrown away.

I think someone brought something up in response to that, in this very thread actually.

If Taiwan mines the most likely beachheads/ports, they will just be starving themselves, PRC can just wait them out in that case and bomb them with impunity. I suppose Taiwan could use naval mines to try to funnel PLAN assets into some sort of killzone... but realistically, any strong point Taiwan decides to funnel PLAN into, is going to be destroyed and used as a port of entry. It's going to be an ugly reverse uno card for them.

So even with mines, I don't really see how this changes anything.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

one problem will indeed be Taiwanese bought mines like QUICKSTRIKE. Unlike those deployed by a far away foreign power, they will be able to be deployed right up to their own coast which will be hard to both detect and sweep. That makes it hard to land amphibious forces where there are mines. Even unmanned MCM ships can't just be thrown away.

I think someone brought something up in response to that, in this very thread actually.

If Taiwan mines the most likely beachheads/ports, they will just be starving themselves, PRC can just wait them out in that case and bomb them with impunity. I suppose Taiwan could use naval mines to try to funnel PLAN assets into some sort of killzone... but realistically, any strong point Taiwan decides to funnel PLAN into, is going to be destroyed and used as a port of entry. It's going to be an ugly reverse uno card for them.

So even with mines, I don't really see how this changes anything.

Well, if I'm going to be frank, I believe we have to talk about the Muricans looking forward towards mining the entire China Seas with these kinds of mines and hidden torpedoes in order to impede PLAN warships and submarines from even leaving their bases entirely:

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Taiwan is just a small piece of the entire equation.

Recall this?

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If Murican military planes can venture this close to the Chinese coastline (and much closer even) on a constant basis and with impunity, what's stopping them from (secretly) mining the entire Chinese coastline with discreet methods over the past years and decades, and going into the coming years?

Basically attempting a repeat of how they starved Japan towards the end of WW2, that is.

This, apart from LO missile swarms, are among a series of worrying developments which could significantly impact China's military power projection into the WestPac in the future.