@plawolf, 1. I did not shift goal posts, nor did I change my mind at all about how China today will utterly fail in the 1991 Gulf War vs. Iraq.
You shifted goal posts when you say that 7. China can prevail IF they had the same basing and other international support that the US did. Fact is China today does not have and cannot muster the equivalent support that the US did. So just with this fundamental point your entire argument falls flat. The strategic setup is a deliberate part of a military's capability, not a transferrable happenstance.
That is a plainly ridiculous claim. Since this is a purely hypothetical scenario, there is no way in hell you could come up with a plausible way to factor in political outcomes. The entire attempt to add a political element is nothing more than an attempt to make things harder for China since even you must realize how ridiculous your 'utter fail' comment its.
You are shifting the goal posts becomes you are deliberately trying to disallow China to use the same land based airfields and also remove the coalition support that America enjoyed in 91, so you are presenting the China in this purely hypothetical example with a far harder challenge than what the US faced in 91 to try and support your own unreasonable conclusions. That is pretty dishonest and biased.
2. and 3. You simply showed me your ignorance of the facts, so let me help enlighten you:
Strategic airlift - 200+ C-5s, C-141s were involved in airlifting weapons and personnel for the US. At best in terms of comparable aircraft China has about 20 Il-76s.
And you are showing your inability to comprehend a point already made by me. America has a much greater strategic airlift capability, but that is completely irrelevant. It took the US and allies like 6 months to build up their forces, and the vast majority went in via strategic sealift ships.
Strategic airlift is only relevant for rapid response forces, which does not apply in this example. Have you even bothered to do the simple maths to see how ridiculously many sorties all of those transports would need to fly to transport the number of men, machines and materials involved in Desert Storm into theatre?
Carriers and airwings - 6 carrier battle groups participated in the Gulf War, contributing 400+ aircraft. China today has no equivalent, the Varyag is still being worked on.
Again, making me repeat myself. Look at my previous post to yourself and my recent reply to popeye.
Amphibious ships - around 30 amphibious assault ships with their corresponding aircraft and amphibious forces participated in the Gulf War. This tied down 6 divisions of Iraqi forces deployed to block likely coastal attack routes - they were flanked. China may be able to come up with a similar sized fleet but will not have anywhere near the number of aircraft (transport choppers, helicopter gunships, no equivalents at all when it comes to Harriers).
Again, already pointed out that since no amphibious landings were conducted, the lack of Amphibious assets is hardly going to be a deciding factor.
Tying down 6 divisions might have been helpful, but given the quality difference between current Chinese ground forces equipment and what the Iraqi forces had in 91 as well as the vastly greater numbers the PLA could commit compared to the US, those 6 divisions will not make much of a difference at all.
Organic CAS - just in terms of equivalents to Cobras and Apaches, Chinese WZ-9s are not nearly as survivable nor as numerous, WZ-10s just began deployment and are at least nowhere nearly as numerous.
Hardly required when one looks at the vast gulf in capabilities of the Type99 compared to Iraq's downgraded T72s.
Subs with LACMs - in sheer numbers these are a small proportion of total munitions expended but still a significant number at least in the dozens. These are smart munitions meaning that many more targets hit. And I forgot to mention battleships with LACMs, at least two ships firing 50+ rounds. Around 300 Tomahawks total were fired by US naval forces, China does not have the known ability to deliver this much firepower with its naval forces.
Again, looking at the total number of munitions dropped, this makes almost no difference in the grand scheme of things. China also have land based cruise missiles that are every bit as advanced and capable as US tomahawks of 91. These could easily be launched from neighboring countries in far greater numbers than the 300 used by USN forces to achieve better results. Launching them from naval assets is a pointless hair splitting requirement made for the sake of it instead of it having any noticeable impact on the overall outcome.
Long range strategic bombers - B-52s delivered 40% of all munitions dropped during the Gulf War flying from the Middle East, Europe, and the continental US. Smart bombs may be able to hit targets better, but it does not have the same demoralizing effect on troops across the theatre. Even if China wanted to carpet bomb, it would not be able to with fewer and less capable H-6s.
I have listed them several times.
5. This in and of itself allowed the US to deploy more and higher quality forces to fight Iraq. Would China deploy all its J-11/Su-27/30s, J-10s, and JH-7s in a fight with Iraq and have only J-8s and J-7s left defending China? No. Can China sustain 2500+ sorties per day (of similar quality as the US) against targets in Iraq? No.
Why would China needs to deploy all of its modern air fleet or need to sustain the same number of sorties by itself when the US enjoyed significant support from coalition partners and allies?
What more, of those 2500+ sorties, how many were with precious munitions and how many were with iron bombs? LGBs were very new in 91, and the bulk of the bombing was done with dumb weapons. China today can employ far more, and a much broader choice of PGMs, thus could achieve similar results with far fewer sorties.
In addition, air power was not what won the Iraq war. The coalition was actually running out of targets and were 'bouncing rubble with million dollar missiles'.
Even with less than half of the current PLAAF assets, China would be able to easily swot Iraq's 91 air force aside, suppress Iraqi air defenses and take out key targets with at the minimum similar effectiveness and loss rates as what the coalition achieved in 91. The disparity in ground forces equipment is so huge that the PLA would annihilate the Iraqi army even if the PLAAF left them untouched before the PLA went in.
The PLA is also different from the US as they prefer integrated massed artillery support to CAS. Different tactics to get the same job done. With the sheer number and quality of modern PLA artillery and MLRS, they could probably cause more devastation than CAS provided by US army aviation attack helos.
6. You gotta be kidding right? Besides from the carriers and bombers mentioned above there are other things the US had that China still doesn't, not the least of which are dozens of F-117 stealth bombers which made many of the initial bombing runs on top tier targets. The quantity and quality of CAS that China can deploy today is unlikely to match that of the 1991 US, A-10s - no Chinese equivalent, C-130 gunships - no Chinese equivalent, helicopter gunships - Chinese ones today are less numerous and at least the WZ-9 is less capable as mentioned above.
Well you are just showing your own ignorance with such comments. Had you came up with the F117 to start with, I would have agreed with you on that point. However, cruise missiles could have achieved the same results.
China has had the A5 for decades now. Not quite as good as the A10, but it will blow up tanks just as well.
The AC130 hardly played a war changing role, its an added bonus, but not even close to a deciding factor.
So besides from 7. which completely invalidates your argument, given the facts I've listed several other things would likely happen if China today took on 1991 Iraq:
- China will have a hard time intimidating Iraq from launching a pre-emptive strike on forces as they arrive in theatre
- China will have a harder time, if not an outright hard time achieving air superiority and destroying as much Iraqi c3/c4 as the US
- China will not be able to demoralize Iraqi forces as much as the US did through an air campaign
- All this means that more Iraqi forces are likely to continue fighting longer as conventional forces, even if these forces are defeated Iraq is less likely to sue for peace with China than to continue fighting through guerilla warfare
- Given the lesser armor of Chinese ground vehicles and their likely susceptability to 1991 Iraqi weapons, Chinese forces are likely to suffer higher casualties than US forces did
A list of baseless speculation and unsupported conclusions.
Even if we ignore the problems China has in getting to Iraq in the first place, China only has some chance of accomplishing a Pyrrhic victory after a long and costly war, which would equal an utter failure because it wasn't worth it.
The Chinese military today can definitely defeat 1991 Iraq in an imaginary neutral arena, but not so much in a real world simulation.
All of the points you made are just marginal facts at the very best. You have completely ignored the many advantages the PLA of today has over the US military of 91 despite me raising them repeatedly.
Everything you have written is quite clearly an example of someone trying desperately to find evidence to back up an opinion they already have.
There is absolutely no one here who has agreed with your ridiculous suggestion that the PLA of today would 'utterly fail' against Iraq of 91, and I would be amazed if anyone ever will.
You can believe what you want, I could not care less, but I think the vast majority of members here will agree with me that your conclusion is plainly absurd.
