PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

plawolf

Lieutenant General
Live fire exercise by ROCA this week with TOW-2B, might give us a glimpse of the level of training, they had a few misses, something like 70% hit rate. What should be expected of TOW-2B?

Is that 70% what was officially announced? Because the announcer was calling ‘hits’ when shots were just splashing waves. And they are shooting TOWs at targets so close you would expect better than 70% hit rates if they were using their service rifles. Those poor cannon fodders haven’t even got a prayer of a chance in a real shooting war. Their best strategy is to invest in white underwear that can be easily repurposed as flags. Maybe carry a fresh pair in your kit, as the PLA might get confused if you raise brown flags.
 

ACuriousPLAFan

Brigadier
Registered Member
PLA has envisioned five scenarios for the possibility of conflict.
The consumption of ammunition in future wars will be enormous.
In addition, Wang Shiyi believes that the current strategy adopted by the United States is the fourth scenario: direct military intervention.
And the situation can shift towards the fifth scenario at any time, which is full-scale war.

I think full-scale war between China and the US will also entail this, taken from
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last week:
More Chinese military researchers proposed bringing the war to the US homeland if it could not be avoided.

The problem is - How? How should China do that without triggering a nuclear exchange with the US? Using ICBMs, even if fitted with conventional warheads, seriously risks being mistakenly viewed by DC as a Chinese nuclear first strike.

In the meantime, China doesn't have strategic bombers that can reach CONUS and return, to begin with.
No cruise missile with big enough range to reach CONUS from mainland China either.
China doesn't have a sufficiently large navy fleet that can overwhelm the US Navy on its own, capture all those US-held bases and islands across much of the Pacific, and sail right off the Californian coast to lob missiles at San Francisco and Los Angeles.

So - How, exactly?
 
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Biscuits

Colonel
Registered Member
I think full-scale war between China and the US also entailed these, taken from
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last week:


The problem is - How? How should China do that without triggering a nuclear exchange with the US? Using ICBMs, even if fitted with conventional warheads, seriously risks being mistakenly viewed by DC as a Chinese nuclear first strike.

In the meantime, China doesn't have strategic bombers that can reach CONUS to begin with.
No cruise missile with big enough range to reach CONUS from mainland China either.
And China doesn't have a sufficiently large navy fleet that can overwhelm the US Navy on its own, capture all those US-held Pacific bases and islands, and sail right off the Californian coast to lob missiles at San Francisco and Los Angeles.

So, how, exactly?
How did US eventually bring the war to the Japanese mainland during ww2?

Just like US back then, China will at the start only have the ability to deliver token levels of ordinance to the enemy home cities. But as the war goes on, China will have the largest economy in the world consistently churning out new numbers and typed of platforms.

One of the key lessons China could learn from ww2 is the prominence of escort carriers. While China can only build 2-4 supercarriers at a time in large facilities which take years to complete and may be vulnerable to wartime sabotage, China can churn out insane amounts (high dozens) of 075 sized carriers or even smaller, specially optimized escort carriers at a quick rate.

The general plan would be island hopping. Firstly crush the US offensive towards Taiwan, using the momentum from said victory to launch a counteroffensive on the remaining KMT forces, from there on prepare hits on Ryukyu, Guam and any country on America's side. All the while, production of arms, cruise missiles etc would ramp up using China's full industrial capacity.

The higher China can increase it's peacetime budget, the less risky such a strategy would be. Hence, it is so important for lobbies in China to lobby for increased rearmament efforts.
 

Temstar

Brigadier
Registered Member
They did live fire of Stingers plus other AD systems. Of note the news said they fired 12 stingers and hit 8 targets.

Here's a Taiwanese talk show where the guest was both someone who was in the army as well as a reporter at the life fire exercise. He reckons the sun shinning directly down was interfering with missile tracking. Some of them never acquired their target so never fired.

If you're wondering what all these sudden life fire exercise is about, it's nearly time for this year's Han Kuang Exercise so these are warm ups.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
They did live fire of Stingers plus other AD systems. Of note the news said they fired 12 stingers and hit 8 targets.

Here's a Taiwanese talk show where the guest was both someone who was in the army as well as a reporter at the life fire exercise. He reckons the sun shinning directly down was interfering with missile tracking. Some of them never acquired their target so never fired.

If you're wondering what all these sudden life fire exercise is about, it's nearly time for this year's Han Kuang Exercise so these are warm ups.

There was me being charitable and thinking maybe someone in the logistics department realised they did a fuck up and found a load of expired missiles, so rather than own up to their fuck up, they decided to organise some unscheduled live fire exercises that just happens to require the exact numbers and types of expired missiles.
 

solarz

Brigadier
Is that 70% what was officially announced? Because the announcer was calling ‘hits’ when shots were just splashing waves. And they are shooting TOWs at targets so close you would expect better than 70% hit rates if they were using their service rifles. Those poor cannon fodders haven’t even got a prayer of a chance in a real shooting war. Their best strategy is to invest in white underwear that can be easily repurposed as flags. Maybe carry a fresh pair in your kit, as the PLA might get confused if you raise brown flags.

70% hit rate is good enough, just fire 3 shots and you'll have 210% hit rate!
 
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