Comparing 1990 with today

Whole point of this thread will be shown in a later post but for now can you answer me this question:

How would you rate the capability gap between the 1990 US led coalition air forces and cruise missile attacks and the iraqi air forces and air defence forces? I'm talking about the whole thing: equipment, grand strategy, tactics, readiness, etc. Just make the best guess you can make.

Now, imagine a similar type war today versus china, where US doesn't intend to put ground forces in china but just uses air power and stand off missile attacks to inflict as much damage to enemy as possible. How would you rate the same capability gap? More or less the same as the one between US and iraq in 1990? Bigger? Smaller? By how much per cent? I know, i know, these things are impossibly hard to guess but just give it a shot.

The capability gap cannot be anything else other than smaller.

Iraq is a relatively small country with a very low population. Overall it probably compares well to a larger better populated Mid West State in the US.

China is a country of Continental Proportions. A typical Province has the size and population of a major European Country.

This fact alone means that US ability to strike at China is heavily diluted. The 1990's coalition was able to virtually surround Iraq and conduct its campaign as a cohesive whole. In the case of China it would be a series of Air War fronts, which although intensive in the combat areas, would be highly localised and leave vast areas of China untouched. Conversly concentrating and attacking a few strategic economic areas ie PRD, Shanghai, Hebei etc would leave vast areas untouched where production and military forces could be redeployed.

The question of an objective is highly pertinant. In Iraq the coalition could overwhelm and annihialte the States Military and Civil Infrastructures in one short and highly intensive phase. In China such a plan would need to roll from area to area leaving enough time for repair and regeneration in previously targeted areas. On top of this I would suspect that an attempt of proto Shock and Awe on China would probably bankrupt the attacker prior to breaking the target.

This is course is all before you raise the matter of Air Defences which are far more advanced and far better operated than those operated by Iraq. The Iraqi Airforce never flew (except to Iran) let alone mounted counter strikes. I think we can assume this would not be the case with China. We can also assume that the practical measures used in Serbia against the NATO air campaign of 99, would certainly be utilsed very effectively by the Chinese and that Attacker Suppression of Air Defences would be only partially succesful and that the rate and level of Attacker Losses would be consistantly high.

In short, only a mass Nucleur attack on all major Chinese population centres would have any chance of destroying the country.

SampanViking said:

In short, only a mass Nucleur attack on all major Chinese population centres would have any chance of destroying the country.

Click to expand...

I think the last part is really crucial. Saddam would never have fallen if he had even one nuclear bomb that he could deliver to Israel. Now of course, some people will say that China lacks second strike, but I think it's just the opposite. China simply doesn't reveal anything about its strategic forces (until there's a chance of hostility). But all reliable reports indicate that China is technologically capable of producing mobile ICBM's that can reach all of ConUSA.

Hmm this thread seems to be going into wrong direction now...but its my fault, i was too vague.

What i meant to say is this:

If we assume that there's a war where US does air strikes and cruise missile strikes on china - but no ground invasion - it'd be all very similar to what went on in 1990 versus iraq.

Except that china is a much larger country with many more targets. I'm gonna go with a multiplier of ten, and even that i believe is an understatement.

So lets assume the capability gap i mentioned in the first post is same in our hypothetical war as it was between us and iraq in 1990.

During little more than a month of air operations in first gulf war US led coalition lost 40 airplanes to enemy fire and had 40 more were damaged. (that's not counting accidents and friendly fire incidents, of course) Out of 40 that were lost, 30 were US airplanes and 10 were from other coalition members. Only one plane was brought down in air to air combat, and it was american f18. All else were destroyed by AAA fire and sams.

Using our multiplier of ten, minimum number of planes US can expect to lose in such an air war is 350. (since those 10 coalition lost planes in 1990 were, in part, not as advanced as us ones, i'm giving the benefit of doubt that less would be lost had all the planes been US ones)

So that's absolutely most optimistic figure for US if it does get entangled in such a war.

But some have said, and i do agree, that the capability gap between today's china and todays us is less than one between 1990 US and iraq. Why? Cause iraq had a much weaker, much more centralized (prone to decapitation) and less advanced early warning network. Cause its military equipment, planes, aams, sams was, even for back then just not as modern as chinese stuff is now. Yes, there's tons of old equipment china has now, too, but on top of that there's some top of the line stuff. Pilot training is better in china than it was in iraq then. Stealth was completely new back then, one needs to remember that f117 was unveiled to public only 2 years before the gulf war. Todays stealth tech in b2, even though its superior to one used on f117 is well known how it works and what one must do to higher its chances of success against it. Finally - unlike iraq - china has strategic depth, far away airfields, bases, factories, etc, out of reach for a good deal of US planes, putting those that can attack 'em into a more dangerous enviroment.

Of course, one can still only pull assumption out of one's behind, make up figures. So i'll do that and say US can not realistically expect to lose less than some 600 planes before obliterating most of PLAAF and PLAN's equipment and severly damagning china's command and communication netowork, taking out military factories, etc. Its not improbable the final number of planes lost and so damaged they'd have to be written off would approach a thousand.

So, while it would undoubtedly cost china more, the losses for US would be vast as well, so big in fact that it'd have to ask itself just how much of an edge it has left over the rest of the world, and if it is ready to put itself in such a position, especially with countries like N. korea and syria and Iran who are supposed to be in check because of fear of US attack.

Totoro said:

Whole point of this thread will be shown in a later post but for now can you answer me this question:
How would you rate the capability gap between the 1990 US led coalition air forces and cruise missile attacks and the iraqi air forces and air defence forces? I'm talking about the whole thing: equipment, grand strategy, tactics, readiness, etc. Just make the best guess you can make.
Now, imagine a similar type war today versus china, where US doesn't intend to put ground forces in china but just uses air power and stand off missile attacks to inflict as much damage to enemy as possible. How would you rate the same capability gap? More or less the same as the one between US and iraq in 1990? Bigger? Smaller? By how much per cent? I know, i know, these things are impossibly hard to guess but just give it a shot.

Click to expand...

1) To compare between Gulf War I and Gulf War II, Iraq's military was severely beaten in Gulf War I and the country placed under embargo for a decade, prior to Gulf War II. During this time Iraq was not able to effectively rebuild its military or replace lost equipment. It couldn't even export its oil freely to earn income.

In comparison, the US military had proven the success of precision-strike weapons in Gulf War I, and by Gulf War II, the % of "smart" or precision-guided weapons used had increased by many times.

2) The PRC's military in 1990 was certaintely larger than Iraq's, not to mention nuclear weapons. BUT, in terms of technology, the Iraqi armed forces actually had more modern toys than the PLA. For an example, in 1990 the Iraqi AF had AWACs and MiG-29's. The Iraqi army also had more advanced SAM's. Unfortunately for them, Saddam didn't allocate decent training budget and went to war against a superpower.

3) The PLA, unlike Iraqi forces, has been able to modernize some of its forces via domestic R&D and imports. However, at present it's unlikely that the PLA is able to counter against USAF advanced stealth technology. Both the USN and USAF are far larger and more advanced than PLAN and PLAAF. i.e. the USAF has more than 2,000 F-16's in its inventory.

People often joke about "Chinese Wave Attack". In US vs. PRC scenario, I think the US is actually in a position where it can do massed wave attacks ("american wave attack"?) via stand off weapons and air/sea invasions to completely overwhelm PRC defenders. The USAF & USN can afford to lose & easily replace several hundred aircraft, the PLAAF cannot.

All this is very interesting, and I certainly agree on the fact that through sheer size China would present a huge problem for any invader, Field Marshal Montgomery once said: "Rule one on page one in the book about how to fight a war is 'never march on Moscow', rule number two is 'never go with your land armies into China'".

However, I also agree on the fatc that people seems to have forgotten the state of the Iraqi armed forces in 1990. In those days the Iraqi army was said to be the fourth largest in the world, operating high-tech aircrafts, missiles, tanks etc. (the navy was perhaps lacking somewhat, but due to the short shoreline it is understandable).

Now, what really made a difference was training, and since the US still has the qualitative edge in training I believe they could pull off a air/missile offensive. Also US still has the qualitative edge in almost every other area, so in the end the question of victory would be how much the US would be willing to spend vs. how much the Chinese government can take.

All this is however completly hypotetical, under the assumptions that no political pressure (domestic or foreign), alliances, the goal of the operations and logistical problems would be in place. In the end these things will mess up the equations, but I still would guess that the US has an advantage.

The US also has an enormous lead in the area of "force multipliers". These multipliers are what gives the US their greatest advantage.
I cannot stress enough how vital this is in war.

1.) Aerial Refueling - The capability to keep the MAJORITY of your forces in the front lines for longer periods of time.
2.) Highly Trained Ground Personel - Affects the sortie rate of your aircraft. In the Arab-Israeli wars, thanks to IDF ground crews, the IDF aircraft can be put in the air at a higher rate than their Arab counter parts. For example, you have 4 planes that you can sortie 4 per day vs your enemy with 6 planes that can sortie 2 per day. You have him outnumbered even though they have more aircraft.
3.) AEW - provides situational awareness. PLAN AEW is at its infancy...it cannot track as much aircraft as the US ones. Therefore, US aircraft know at all times, where friendly and hostile forces are, while PLA aircraft are mostly blind. Also, since the US has used its AEW equipment more, this leads to something called "equipment familiarity" - the ability to know in which condition your equipment works best, etc. It is something you get from years of training and experience
4.) ELINT support - Jamming and decoys...will have PLA Sams and aircraft going after non existing USAF strike, wasting resources, revealing their position, and leaving them vulnerable to an ambush.
5.) Stealth - The F-22, B-2, and F-117 provides USAF generals with a multitude of strategic options that conventional aircraft cannot. I mean, just to try and shoot one of these will tie up PLAN assets that could be needed elsewhere.
6.) Training and experience - USAF and USN pilots have actually dropped bombs and shot down other aircraft in a combat setting. These experiences are further sharpened by military exercises such as Red Flag, etc. In fact, no other nation spends more money in training the the US.
7.) Weapons - USAF and USN percent of precision and standoff weapons are approaching 80% of inventory.
8.) Numbers - PLAN 4th gen aircraft number around 500-600 airframes, US has over 2,000 F-16 alone.

There are others that I did not think of...I will post them when I do.

The point I have to raise again is what would be the objective? What capability woould such an operation be seeking to destroy?

It was possible to destroy much of Iraq's operational infrastructure in 1990, because there was relativly little of it and mostly concentrated in the River Areas. This sort of bombardment only makes sense if you are opening up entry points for ground action.

I come back to the "size" and "complexity" of China. In WW2 it took literally years of near continuous bombing of Germany to denude the countries Industrial (hence subsequently its defense) capability sufficiently to enable an effective invasion to occur. Well, Germany is about the size and population (integral with complexity) of Guangdong Province. You need this campaign to at least devastate, simultainously at least all the eastern Provinces. I will not even dwell on the questions that arise from many targets being Western Corporate Assets.

The other point, I will come back to is that I do not remember the Iraqi Airforce doing anything in 1990. Hardly any planes even scrambled for combat missions, whilst some planes fled straight to Iran.

I hardly think that the PLAAF would react in the same way. I believe attacking forces would be in range of counter strikes (planes and missiles) and that the ability of even a great power like the US would have significant problems in harnessing its power to effectively prosecute a campaign of this sort.

In summary, I think too many posters are viewing this as if it were just another Short Sharp Regime Change Junkett. This for me as a Brit, is rather like comparing Kitcheners Sudanese/Nile Campaign with WW1. We constantly had to knock over local native rebellions, but this was no preperation for the horrors and rigours of a modern major war.

Sometimes I really wonder if some people here actually read what has been written in previous posts...

Anyway, we all seem to agree that US would win such an air war, no one is disputing that. I started the whole thread already stating that. Still people keep listing why would china lose such a war. No one is disputing that. If you're gonna list stuff then list out points which talk about the differences of 1990 iraq defense and 2006 china defense situation - in accordance to US forces in 1990 compared to 2006. What i am asking here, the only thing really, is for your (educated or not, preferably educated) guesses as to how many planes would US forces lose in order to succeed at doing to china today what they did to iraq in 1990.

I, myself, omitted to mention one hugely important difference. Iraq was attacked from turkey, from saudi arabia, with targets being sometimes just hundreds of km away from the airfields. Prior to that, US had to fly all the planes in the theatre. Not a small undertaking.

In attacking china, forces would have to several times larger than used in iraq in 1990 to retain the same overwhelming strike capability, outnumbering the enemy. Actually, i doubt us would field more planes than china, quantitively. Which is beside the point since quantitatively speaking, of course, most of planes china could muster would be old pieces of junk.

One has to keep in mind that US can't just whisk any plane it wants anywhere from the world and put it in combat half way round the world. Certain number of planes would have to stay home and defend home. Certain number of planes would have to remain in middle east, etc. China, on the other hand, has nothing to lose. It's defending its homeland.

It is my belief russia would no way let US use its airspace, let alone its land to base attacks from. India is more likely to do so but since it would have to live with china next to its border afterwards - it too has far more to lose politically in aiding the US. Similar logic would say no indochina country would let its bases be used, even though use of airspace would probably be unofficialy granted to the US. It doesn't leave too many different approaches to be used in attacking china. And they would all involve crossing several hundreds of km of sea, easier to monitor than ground.

Again, i must point out, there will still be parts of china not accesible to great number of US planes, at least not until the entire coast is rid of SAMs so slowly air refuelling could be done over china's soil in order for US to attack deeper inland. All that means there would be no overwhelming strike at all fronts. china is just too big and too spread apart for that. Thre would always be places deep inland for chinese forces to reorganize. (air launched cruise missiles would be spent in first days of war anyway)

I still stick to my 600 planes lost on the US side figure, at least. What is yours?

And, not that it matters that much, to those who claim US has over 2000 of F16s - you must be using wrong and/or old data. In 2005 USAAF had 758 f16s, air force reserve command had 74 f16s and the national guard had 533 f16s. Yes, there are probably more f16s stored somewhere in the deserts of nevada or new mexico, but those are not in flying condition and would all need from 3-12 months of testing and work before they could fly. (besides, then we'd have to take into account some 2-3 thousands of j6 planes, stored away in the same way)

600 is a bit much, more like 200-300. The majority will be wild weasel aircraft.

One has to keep in mind that US can't just whisk any plane it wants anywhere from the world and put it in combat half way round the world. Certain number of planes would have to stay home and defend home. Certain number of planes would have to remain in middle east, etc. China, on the other hand, has nothing to lose. It's defending its homeland.

Click to expand...

The continental US has no hostile neighbors. It has Canada to the North and Mexico to the South. Cuba is a non-factor. It doesn't need a very large homeland defence airforce.

Again, i must point out, there will still be parts of china not accesible to great number of US planes, at least not until the entire coast is rid of SAMs so slowly air refuelling could be done over china's soil in order for US to attack deeper inland. All that means there would be no overwhelming strike at all fronts. china is just too big and too spread apart for that. Thre would always be places deep inland for chinese forces to reorganize. (air launched cruise missiles would be spent in first days of war anyway)

Click to expand...

How many S-300 sams do China possess? It cannot possibly defend its long coastline at the same level at the same time. Most of these defences will be concentrated on high value areas, such as airfields.

You are also forgeting about cruise missile attacks.
Within days, the US can station the USS Ohio (154 TLAMs), the Kitty Hawk battleg group with about (100 TLAM), sevaral TLAM capable LA subs, plus a couple of squadron of B-52 off Guam, carrying 20 CALCMs. Add this with the conjunction of stealth bomber strikes and large amounts of stand off munitions and you got a very lethal combination and that is just the first wave. This followed up by fighter sweeps, wild weasel strikes, air attacks, etc to gradually roll back PLAAF's defences until it is a shell of itself.

Targets always include fix land line communications node, forcing PLAAF to go wireless, which can be jammed or listened too; radar installations; maintenence yards; fuel depots; SAM sites; naval ports; bridges; etc...

Attacks can originate along the entirety of the Chinese coast. That is a lot of real estate to defend. PLAAF, needs top of the line CnC to respond to USAF operational tempo along any points of the coastline.