Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

lcloo said:

I don't think PLA has ever been soft to their opponents during fire fights, they usually give all they have thrown at their enemy, the huge number of KMT deaths can be testimonial to this. However, after the battle is over, PLA can be soft to their prisoners, as shown by their treatments of war prisoners (KMT soldiers in civil war, imperial Japanese in WW2, Korean war UN soldiers and Indian soldiers in China-India border war/conflicts).

In any fire fights against ROC soldiers in Taiwan, PLA is not expected to fight like Russians in Ukraine. An enemy is an enemy, there won't be any mercy unless they surrender. Civilians will be given the opportunity to leave battle zones before fire fights and during ceasefire, and those that decided to stay will have to take their chances.

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Those are all wars 70 years ago. How true is it today? It's much easier to fight an enemy that is different to you (e.g. Japanese, Americans, Indians) than a "brother war". In my opinion poor ROE the biggest reason Russia is in the situation they are in right now.

lcloo said:

Classic PLA war doctrines is to fight the enemy outside cities, then sorround the city and negotiate with the defenders inside to surrender peacefully. Of course this may not work all the time, in which case strikes against enemy position inside the city will have to carry out by all means.

I would consider urban battles as early stage of mopping up operation rather than part of main invasion phase because when a city is surrounded, PLA is already winning. Later stage of mopping up phase will be hunting down enemies hidding in the mountains.

Just like in Mariupol, PLA can take their time systematically clear sector by sector in a city until all enemy are terminated. Damages to buildings and infrastructure can not be avoided, and must be accepted.

A city under sieze would be under 24 hour surveillence by drones like CH-4/5, JDI types of drones, unmanned ground vehicles etc, to track all movements and activities on the ground and fortified positions inside buildings. Identified enemy positions will be terminated by all means.

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That's what the Russian plan in Mariupol was. Reports of Ukrainian soldiers killing Russian "sympathisers" is what forced their hand to assault the city. In a hypothetical scenario ROC could do the same.

Destroying Taiwanese infrastructure and industry would be much worse than Russia doing the same in the Ukraine, compare the GDP of both. The only thing Ukraine economically offers Russia is its dilapidated ex-Soviet industry and farmland. The former will probably need rebuilding anyway and the later is just land, hard to destroy that. It would be far more beneficial for China to capture Taiwan with its semiconductor industry intact and all employees alive than to raze it all to the ground Russian style.

Abominable said:

That's what the Russian plan in Mariupol was. Reports of Ukrainian soldiers killing Russian "sympathisers" is what forced their hand to assault the city. In a hypothetical scenario ROC could do the same.

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I think the situation would be more different here, since most Taiwanese think they are not Chinese and not for reunification, there won't be any city with a high amount of pro-China population unlike what we see in regions of Ukraine for Russia. But I do expect lots of false flag and staged attacks to blame China on.

I think the PLA may shock the world with how high tech they are at urban warfare.

The early adoption of drones and unmanned ground combat vehicles by the PLA is very noteworthy. Especially the things they are researching are extremely relevant to urban combat, with swarm drone dynamic obstacle avoidance in complex 3rd environments, and automatic tracking of individual in said environments.

They also have whole catalogs of heavy flying rotor drones that can mount anything from assault rifles to automatic grenade launchers and missiles. These things will make short work of rooftop missile teams and window snipers.

Rather than send in infantry to search buildings the old fashioned way, I think there is a good chance they will send in swarm drones that can quickly scan entire buildings.

This speeds things up massively since the majority of rooms and buildings will be empty of enemy. So you can afford to focus your forces to breach and clear the buildings and rooms where the enemy are actually holed up. If they got civilian human shields. Tank rounds will probably do the trick if not.

Incidentally, an unofficial but ironclad policy of take no prisoners should be adopted where enemies take civilian hostages as human shields. Plausible deniability should be maintained in terms of official Chinese government position, but there should be no doubt left in the minds of ROC defenders of their fate should they stoop so low as to take their own civilians as human shields in battle.

I would also expect there to be a fair amount of police units involved in urban combat operations. Both in terms of providing the specialist swat teams got room clearing and hostage rescue, but also for the mundane tasks of processing civilians like taking biometrics and other personal details, as well as field forensic analysis, such as swabs for gunpowder and explosive residue on all civilians to screen for infiltrators.

Abominable said:

Destroying Taiwanese infrastructure and industry would be much worse than Russia doing the same in the Ukraine, compare the GDP of both. The only thing Ukraine economically offers Russia is its dilapidated ex-Soviet industry and farmland. The former will probably need rebuilding anyway and the later is just land, hard to destroy that. It would be far more beneficial for China to capture Taiwan with its semiconductor industry intact and all employees alive than to raze it all to the ground Russian style.

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I would not count on capturing that fab equipment and even if they did where would you get support and parts for it later?
The staff is probably the most valuable part.

am wondering if a window sniper can be identified by a drone armed with thermal imaging and AI facial recognition?
any human that moves, even staying stationary behind a window, once gets picked up can be dealt with by drone launched grenades or automatic rifles.
this is high-tech urban warfare, something the Russians have not shown to be capable of, or at least not shown publicly.
but we have repeatedly seen China demonstrating such high-tech drones and unmanned fighting vehicles. will Russia buy such equipment from China, and would China sell when asked?

plawolf said:

I think the PLA may shock the world with how high tech they are at urban warfare.

The early adoption of drones and unmanned ground combat vehicles by the PLA is very noteworthy. Especially the things they are researching are extremely relevant to urban combat, with swarm drone dynamic obstacle avoidance in complex 3rd environments, and automatic tracking of individual in said environments.

They also have whole catalogs of heavy flying rotor drones that can mount anything from assault rifles to automatic grenade launchers and missiles. These things will make short work of rooftop missile teams and window snipers.

Rather than send in infantry to search buildings the old fashioned way, I think there is a good chance they will send in swarm drones that can quickly scan entire buildings.

This speeds things up massively since the majority of rooms and buildings will be empty of enemy. So you can afford to focus your forces to breach and clear the buildings and rooms where the enemy are actually holed up. If they got civilian human shields. Tank rounds will probably do the trick if not.

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That would be a very scary prospect to be faced against. An army of killer drones assaulting a building and wiping out defenders. It's certainly not science fiction anymore.

It's the sort of thing that would make the average ROC soldier just surrender and defect instead of showing resistance and dragging the war on.

plawolf said:

Incidentally, an unofficial but ironclad policy of take no prisoners should be adopted where enemies take civilian hostages as human shields. Plausible deniability should be maintained in terms of official Chinese government position, but there should be no doubt left in the minds of ROC defenders of their fate should they stoop so low as to take their own civilians as human shields in battle.

I would also expect there to be a fair amount of police units involved in urban combat operations. Both in terms of providing the specialist swat teams got room clearing and hostage rescue, but also for the mundane tasks of processing civilians like taking biometrics and other personal details, as well as field forensic analysis, such as swabs for gunpowder and explosive residue on all civilians to screen for infiltrators.

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Yep, I think this is one of the biggest failings of Russia in this war. There's no reason for Ukrainians to not use human shields right now, they aren't being punished for it.

Abominable said:

Those are all wars 70 years ago. How true is it today? It's much easier to fight an enemy that is different to you (e.g. Japanese, Americans, Indians) than a "brother war". In my opinion poor ROE the biggest reason Russia is in the situation they are in right now.

That's what the Russian plan in Mariupol was. Reports of Ukrainian soldiers killing Russian "sympathisers" is what forced their hand to assault the city. In a hypothetical scenario ROC could do the same.

Destroying Taiwanese infrastructure and industry would be much worse than Russia doing the same in the Ukraine, compare the GDP of both. The only thing Ukraine economically offers Russia is its dilapidated ex-Soviet industry and farmland. The former will probably need rebuilding anyway and the later is just land, hard to destroy that. It would be far more beneficial for China to capture Taiwan with its semiconductor industry intact and all employees alive than to raze it all to the ground Russian style.

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Chinese have historically been almost equally brutal in brother wars as in foreign wars. See (in reverse chronological order) Chinese Civil War, Taiping Rebellion, Three Kingdoms, etc. Chinese being on the other side has never been a deterrent.

Jono said:

am wondering if a window sniper can be identified by a drone armed with thermal imaging and AI facial recognition?
any human that moves, even staying stationary behind a window, once gets picked up can be dealt with by drone launched grenades or automatic rifles.
this is high-tech urban warfare, something the Russians have not shown to be capable of, or at least not shown publicly.
but we have repeatedly seen China demonstrating such high-tech drones and unmanned fighting vehicles. will Russia buy such equipment from China, and would China sell when asked?

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Pattern recognition algorithms can easily do that. Computers are exceptionally good at finding patterns. Even in the civilian world drones are used for finding sick plants in a field. They can even say how sick the plant is. This is something much harder than finding human figures on windows. It is impossible with human eyes.

BoraTas said:

Pattern recognition algorithms can easily do that. Computers are exceptionally good at finding patterns.

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this reminds me of the film "Los Angeles" where alien drones searched out and destroyed human soldiers.
Sci-fi movies turning into reality, scary....

Jono said:

am wondering if a window sniper can be identified by a drone armed with thermal imaging and AI facial recognition?
any human that moves, even staying stationary behind a window, once gets picked up can be dealt with by drone launched grenades or automatic rifles.
this is high-tech urban warfare, something the Russians have not shown to be capable of, or at least not shown publicly.
but we have repeatedly seen China demonstrating such high-tech drones and unmanned fighting vehicles. will Russia buy such equipment from China, and would China sell when asked?

Click to expand...

Drones are too loud, you can't loiter in front of a residential building without getting identified because your rotor noise and shot down in less than 1 minute. For window snipers, you are better off with Chinese spies installing some cameras with thermal imaging and AI in a traffic pole, rent a room in opposing building, or somewhere with long endurance. Snipers can appear/disappear for days or weeks, drones don't have the endurance or stealth as surveillance against snipers.