Or we can just let PLA turn the Philippines into an american sperm bank filled with missiles.
China's SCS Strategy Thread
- Thread starter lilzz
- Start date
the range of the missiles and the HIMARS platform as a wheeled truck does not enable them to fire from anywhere on Luzon, but from prepared sites on the northern coast of Luzon even for prsm. you don't need surveillance over entire Luzon. Just the prepared sites near the northern coast.
another problem is that the payload is weak. 90 kg payload. What are the target effects?
Yes, SRBM flight profile is better for airbase targeting. But does not solve the issue of 90 kg payload. 500 kg of payload can take out entire rows of parked planes on the ground, turn a control tower into a crater or clear hardened aircraft shelters. 90 kg needs a direct hit to kill a few parked planes, forget about hardened structures. And it'll have to deal with being slower (due to being a lighter missile with less propellant) and GPS jammers combining to make the INS less accurate. With such a small payload, lower accuracy hurts far more than a 500 kg payload .
OK, let's talk about flight profile. is like, a high flying, slow aircraft which means, which is interceptable even by regular aircraft defenses. , meaning a regular air defense missile can target the ATACMS at all points in its flight.
In contrast, DF-11/15 are heavy missiles with much higher flight speed, which makes it hard to intercept. is something that only specialized BMD missiles can hit.
In summary:
Foreign bases near China, regardless of the territory they're on, are vulnerable to DF-11/15 because they're heavy missiles with powerful target effects, able to be launched from deep inside Chinese territory, and are difficult to intercept without specialized means.
Chinese bases are less vulnerable to adversary SRBMs with smaller payloads that have smaller target effects, have poorer flight profiles that make it easy to intercept with generalized SAMs, and can be launched from only a thin strip of land near the coast.
Darwin is 2000+ km from Mindanao and 3500+ km from Luzon. That's not direct flight range, that's even beyond the maximum reach of ferry range.
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
Firstly, as @FairAndUnbiased already pointed out, F35s would not be able to even self ferry to Luzon from Darwin.
Secondly, just how do you expect those bases to survive after open hostilities break out? Even if F35s haul themselves to Luzon with tanker support, all they will find when they arrive will be craters.
What assets have been deployed to keep those airbases operational in the face of PLA attack? Once you do the maths on what is needed to establish an acceptable level of defence and repair capabilities, you will find that the costs to be prohibitive.
All I hear is magical thinking and empty rhetoric with zero consideration for facts and reality. Actually do the maths on what can be realistically deployed, how those assets can be kept safe and supplied and then we can talk.
If you think the SCS is the best place to fight China you have clearly not done even basic homework on what a fight there will actually mean.
China has deployed, survivable, mutually supporting hard power in the region to underwrite its position in the SCS as well as a vast, modern navy and land based aviation and missile arsenals.
China isn’t counting on anyone not daring to do anything. It’s counting on its ability to curbstomp anyone idiotic enough to try start a shooting war in the SCS.
Just how do you suppose anyone is going to suppress China’s SCS islands? Also, you clearly have no idea of what you are talking about calling those islands small.
Air control would be more than enough, which can be effectively done with UCAVs on a 24/7 bases pretty much indefinitely after the initial push to establish air dominance. The presence of HIMARS will also give the PLA an open pass to systematically delete Philippines civilian and dual use infrastructure like ports, roads and bridges.
You are a funny one. When the PLA is attacking, the costs are disproportionate and prohibitive. When the USA is defending, it only cost pennies.
If you can’t even maintain basic logical consistency and intellectual integrity within the same paragraph, its clear I’m wasting my time trying to reason with you.
Yet more magical thinking where US assets can ignore reality and just teleport around the map in order to outmanoeuvre the PLA that needs to stay put and not reinforce anything anywhere and allow the US and pick its forces apart piecemeal at its leisure.
What you are refusing to accept is the reality that the Philippines are entirely irrelevant to China’s calculus and to the balance of power in the SCS. China’s existing investments are already massive overmatch against the token forces the US can deploy rapidly to the Philippines, and all the support infrastructure in the Philippines are basically open targets for the PLA to delete at its leisure in the event of actual war.
Distance matters, weight of numbers and critical mass matters, logistics matters. All things you wilfully ignore and think doesn’t apply because ‘USA BEST!’
To put it in terms you might understand, China has the high ground in the SCS. America doing the equivalent of leg stretches doesn’t change that fact or will it change the inevitable result if America is stupid enough to try to jump in.
Why? Like again, this is assumptions that enemy will be limited by some arbitrary limitations.
If Philippines are letting US troops(with their clear intention to shoot) in - they're already assuming the status of aggressor under UN charter (as defined by 33314 （XXIX). Assuming their maneuver will be limited, IMHO, is but a wishful thinking.
90kg payload is a weaker 8" shell (or a good 7-7.5 inch), if we use old metrics(gauging everything in shells is convenient). It's enough to make annoying crates, it's enough to airburst open equipment in a significant radius, it's certainly enough to pierce deep into a sub 10'000t ship or reinforced hangar.
It's enough to do a lot of harm.
And while 90kg indeed won't permanently disable a whole row of aircraft(as if there will be such rows) - 1 such strike, maybe 2-3 - and the airbase won't be used anymore for anything but short refuel perhaps. Aircraft aren't cabbages.
Ultimately that's one of the points - infrastructure of island bases won't be fully usable if there are such American fires in Philippines. Given that this infrastructure is paramount for boomer safety in their home bastion&when they leave SCS - it's just one more reason that in case of a war, US-hosting Philippines must be not suppressed (which is a simulation of a solution), but invaded.
I don't know where this number comes from, 50km is twice the number of S-300(coming from loss of efficiency of aerodynamic surfaces). HQ-19 - maybe, but since we all know what are the requirements for a 35-70km intercept - let me just leave it in doubt here. This is simply an area that wasn't even explored by most conventional interceptors until...tomorrow?
Flying to the Philippines in one leg is enough I guess.
@plawolf i'll split answers between you and @FairAndUnbiased in uncovered parts if you don't mind. Or that will be whole lot of typing instead of my happy 假放 ;p
Big bases with lots of local population&military to draw repair workers from.
Big Chinese missiles aren't an infinite resource, and they're needed in an arc stretching from Hokkaido to (potentially) Dehli.
Also, watching Russian strikes against Starokonstantinov(storm shadow base) - while we don't know their exact effect and sometimes there are suspicious windows in strikes from there, the overall fact is that the airfield is unsuppressed. Area & concealment matter.
My master thesis was on a topic closely aligned to them, exactly when they were built. I do have a rough idea of their size, shape, vegetation, infrastructure, and so on.
Experience on the suppression of open atoll airfield bases during WW2 also comes in handy. They are suppressable - way more so than land bases.
Since you doubted my qualifications - let me ask for yours. Have you ever seen or planned scanning patterns for UAVs?
Like, I did. I doesn't work this way - and this is why people still struggle to understand how HIMARS(and Tornados) live in Ukraine. Yet live they do - very often even after getting detected - and lost.
Also, we haven't even achieved that air superiority yet. It's a such small thing as air superiority against the United States at a meager +2-3 thousand kilometers away from the mainland - all that while probably fighting against all those Wanwans, Japans and other South Koreas; maybe Singapore as well.
It isn't some magic thinking - it's a basic self-deployment maneuver into infrastructure that is already there(since the cold war and even WW2), and is being actively refurbished, openly, as we speak. Why all the denial?
Aussie F-35A at Clark.
What matters isn't the "balance of powers". China will be more powerful in SCS, this isn't doubted.
But superior force generation doesn't exactly deny enemy fires.
What matters is that:
(0)Philippines host US troops, aimed at Chinese forces and China proper. They already do.
(2)Philippines, among others, block access to and out of SCS(and also ensure freedom of access from outside to hostile assets);
(3)from Philippines all of the SCS is under threat, and thus your freedom of use of the sea is compromised. SCS includes key SLOCs, including coastal traffic, vital for Chinese economy.
(4)from Philippines, among others, Chinese mainland can be shot (USMC tomahawks).
Yes, China can shoot back and turn the Philippines into a mess, as Russia does at Ukraine.
People will suffer, Zelenskiy will curse from the screen, and nothing will change.
You need to deny the ground to the hostile forces, not take revenge on civilians. It's pointless.
And turning the Philipines into a wasteland without a powerful strategic bombing campaign will not be achieved anyways.
Overall: US fires ensure, that the right solution is being able to invade Philippines in force and occupy them.
Looking scary and threatening consequences has already failed.
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Sounds like your projecting a fight where guerilla warfare has the advantage. Though I would like to see the philippines squirm when the PLA goes to it's shores. Your fight doesn't make sense.
What gives you the impression that the current force structure of the PH military is close to or at near optimal level where it can even play or act as AN EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT FIGHTING FORCE? a.k.a. force multiplier. The number of trained military personnel needed to combat a potential Chinese kinetic conflict will be mostly done in a non-contact manner as envisioned, structured by the PLAN intelligintized war concept. The PH military has not been structured, trained, equipped, funded on a sustained consistent basis for a combat scenario against a potential adversary that's frankly speaking leagues ahead of the PH in every metric of power. Heck, it took the whole PH military to defeat 300 Islamic jihadists in Marawi and that took 6 months with the help of U.S. China, Australia. Furthermore, if a sudden conflict arises between the PH and China due to PH miscalculation or rather arrogance (ala Armenia vs Azerbaijan conflict) is the U.S. force numbers, infrastructures etc. sufficient enough to actually deter, hold, defeat a determined PLA that's far more closer to the Philippines vs the U.S. after all tyranny of distance is not something the U.S. military can't overcome no matter how magical their forces they maybe.
I don't think the Philippine military even matters in any way, other than being a huge mobilization pool in case of a land invasion. They're poor as f.
What matters is the geography of the archipelago and the willingness of their elites (and overall historical pro-US sentiment) to host US troops aimed at China.
They can be inept, poor and so on - but Philippines (islands and people, not the state) are a pain in the ass. And no matter how the country is inept - if they are hosting carefully chosen US forces - it will hurt.
They made their choices. And, frankly speaking, given the speed Chinese anphibious forces expand - i think China made theirs.