Let's try to have a thread just discussing what the Russians did during this conflict and what can China learn. Please keep nukes and which countries you hate out of this discussion.
I think it is early days but there are a few major takeaways.
I've grouped my thoughts into "General lessons for military affairs," "System specific lessons" and "Recommendations for PLA force development/training and procurement".
These are all military specific, and does not broach on geopolitical relations, geoeconomic matters, nor civilian/PR/propaganda domains either.
I also do not include much naval specific lessons from the Ukraine war given there are basically no naval encounters of any value.
The below also is not exhaustive, but are the ones that have jumped out to me the most.
General lessons for military affairs:
-War optimism is a disease (never have one's political expectations or military strategy to be dependent on the enemy experiencing a "rapid collapse" or "lack of resolve" or being "welcomed as liberators")
-Military strategy must dovetail with political goals -- the speed, scale and intensity of required military operations must depend on what the political aims of your objective are, and the ambition of your political aims must be dependent on the real military capabilities you have available.
-No such thing as too large of a magazine size (dependent on common sense of course)
-No such thing as too competent of a logistics supply (dependent on common sense of course)
-No such thing as too much numerical overmatch (dependent on common sense of course)
-Joint service and joint force operations and training is vital to ensuring deconfliction of friendly forces.
-Ensure multiple layers of redundancy for your mission's success, so if one layer fails, another can ensure mission success -- in other words, no plan survives contact with the enemy.
-Do not assume your staging areas are invulnerable to the enemy even if you seemingly believe you have been able to strike your enemy's offensive capabilities -- always assume a degree of vulnerability such that you can adequately disperse, defend and repair your staging areas.
-Your peacetime tactics, techniques and procedures prior to a conflict should seek to as adequately reflect the conditions of the expected actual conflict as possible.
System specific lessons:
-"Insertion assaults" -- which includes air assaults (helicopter borne, and airdrop/paratrooper), and indeed amphibious assaults, are very high risk and vulnerable. Specifically, they are vulnerable to enemy counterattacks, if you do not have extensive and persistent fires support and ISR, and it goes without saying that it requires air superiority with ideally extensive SEAD/DEAD to be achieved as a prerequisite. In addition to firepower and ISR support/superiority, such "insertion assaults" need to be rapidly relieved by heavier forces if they are expected to survive. Due to said vulnerability, any military objective ideally should not hinge on the success of an "insertion assault", unless other options are exhausted/nonexistent -- in the case of the PLA and Taiwan, I believe a large scale amphibious invasion cannot be avoided, however a large scale helicopter borne air assault may not be necessary, and a paratrooper drop is absolutely unnecessary.
-Vulnerability of your inserted forces to enemy preplanned fires/artillery. Countering and mitigation of these will be vital.
-SEAD/DEAD and elimination of opposing aircraft vital to allowing semi-penetrating or penetrating CAS/interdiction and ISR, and even after a "successful" SEAD/DEAD campaign, penetrating aircraft should still have EW/ECM and some kind of fighter support.
-Third party ISR (aerial, space, intelligence) may be a factor to enable enemy targeting to be more effective even with denial of their own organic sensors. Both before and during a conflict. Such possibilities would have to be mitigated at minimum, ideally countered either with non-kinetic or kinetic options.
-A major enhancement of capability is if your forces are able to operate at night (i.e.: possession of night vision equipment in a widespread manner among multiple levels of organization), especially for ground forces.
-AFVs are vulnerable to ATGMs. Goes without saying.
Recommendations for PLA force development/training and procurement (note, I do not include procurement and development of new technological systems like swarming drones, stealth bombers, UGVs etc, or other systems that have not been shown to be mature either in the PLA or in international service)
-Procure PGMs and integrate with fighters and bombers at a relatively large scale -- the PLA are at a state where this can be afforded and it is a significant force multiplier and a necessity for a successful CAS and interdiction capability. Export showcases does not mean you have a large magazine size and integration among fighter types with training. Similarly, the 500kg LGBs that the PLA has in service (with JH-7/As and J-10A/B/Cs) are simply too large and does not allow for sufficient magazine-size-per-sortie to be effective. MALE UCAVs carrying 6-8 KD-10 sized ATGMs and 2-4 50kg PGMs is not a replacement for fast jets carrying a half dozen 250kg PGMs and a targeting pod.
-Buy aerial sensors (targeting pods, SAR pods, drones, JSTARS). This is obvious. All weather ISR capability in a distributed and persistent manner is vital to break opfor counter attacks, to conduct reattacks, and also to strike targets of opportunity, all in a dynamic ground environment.
-TACPs and JTACs are important and should seek to be trained and proliferated at as low of echelons with the army and marines as possible. The role of TACPs/JTACs in supporting CAS cannot be understated, and the role of CAS for enabling inserted forces cannot be understated either.
-SEAD/DEAD is important -- more EW/ECM, more ARMs. Goes without saying.
-Train for missions at scale and with the full spectrum of forces, separately if needed, ideally, in an integrated way. Complex air and naval environments in particular, and deconflicting of said forces.
-A large quantity of first/second echelon forces are vital to ensuring continuity of further operations. It will be important to procure more amphibious vessels and landing craft that can allow for larger first/second wave launches, as well as for facilities that can allow for rapid reinforcement (pontoons, mulberry harbours, with the assumption that it will be difficult to take ports in the first instance). Increasing first/second wave size and increasing the ability to rapidly reinforce them is vital. Yes, the PLA has these ships and systems, but they require more of them.
-Continue developing longer range air and blue water naval forces able to deter/check foreign snooping around area of operations, and to deter foreign air breathing ISR systems.
-Procure and build large magazine sizes of all weapon types, but especially missiles (from BVRAAMs, to SRBMs, to LACMs and ALCMs, to MRLS).
-The vulnerability of AFVs to ATGMs does not have a cheap solution. APS can mitigate ATGMs but is expensive and will be difficult to be widely proliferated. Using combined arms tactics and having sufficient AFVs to absorb losses and continue despite attritional losses, is important against ATGMs.
-Ensure that staging areas (both on the Chinese mainland, and amphibious assault ships that are deploying AAVs and landing craft) are well defended, even if one believes that opfor strike systems/anti ship systems have been adequately degraded.
-Helicopters are very vulnerable to conventional military forces due to proliferation of MANPADs. Their use must be done carefully, and likely best done in a combined arms fashion in support of ground mechanized forces rather than large scale helicopter only operations (like large scale vertical envelopments).
