Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario
- Thread starter tphuang
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Ukrainian Air force currently has less than 5% the sortie rate of Russian Air Force.
200 sorties per day for Russia vs 5-10 for Ukraine. A 20x-40x sortie rate advantage is huge.
We are talking about air superiority (or supremacy, to be more accurate) and that means no Ukraine aircraft would work. 5-10 is a huge number considering the huge gap between Ukraine and Russian aviation.
That would be air supremacy.
After this war, don't even mention Russia and China in the same breath. The PLA's only peer is United States for comparison purposes in terms of capabilities.
Though in terms of egoism, I can easily see some PLA brass getting too overconfident and bungling things up like Putin did with his 5-axis multi-prong blitzkrieg regime change attempt. Really, egoism is the enemy, can't get too overconfident over Taiwan.
Well, to be fair the 5-axis multi-prong lightning attack would have succeeded if the troops, logistics were sustained matching the initial strategic surprise it achieved for a very brief period of time (48hrs) but due to reasons you have articulated in your prior posts regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Putin went in with too few troops to accomplish his goals.
Russia's problem is that it doesn't have money and doesn't have population but wants an imperial class military instead a small defensive one.
China has tons of money and population. China and Russia are utterly incomparable. Russia is simply reverting to the European mean.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
No, the fundamental problem with Russia’s initial 5 axis attack is that they all depended on the other axis achieving their own objectives to come together. That massively over complicated the mission and exponentially increased the odds against it succeeding. And even worse, the battle plans were based on really bad intel that proved woefully far from reality.
PLA multi-axis exercises involves multiple critical attacks which each could win the war individually. That flips the burden and odds on the defender as they need to stop all axis attacks or it’s game over if even one succeeds.
The US is also (predictably) drinking their own kool aid and drawing completely the wrong conclusions from Ukraine.
Mariupol is really an exception rather than the rule when it comes to modern urban combat due to die hard Azov nazis viewing the local ethnic Russian civilian population the same as Russians so had no problem shooting them to prevent them from escaping the city to keep them trapped in the city to be used as human shields. Taiwan’s conscript heavy army is far more likely to turn their guns on any officers that gives them such orders regarding civilians who may well contain their friends and family.
Besides, trying to turtle up in cities in Taiwan is essentially game over as the PLA could easily secure the rest of Taiwan to remove even the possibility of foreign direct military intervention and then just dust off their history books from the Chinese civil war for how to deal with the cities. Spoiler, they will surround them and starve them out. Kinda like Mariupol only with less death and destruction and more surrendering troops once their food and water runs out.
I know I posted about this in NEV thread but this might be useful in here too: what about widespread use of IEP/hybrid drive for combat vehicles and ships? It seems highly relevant for Taiwan.
Advantage of IEP and hybrid drive:
1. Lower tactical IR and acoustic signature as you can turn off engines and run on battery when near combat zones. This would especially be important in shallow littoral regions, beaches, forest, etc. Exactly what you expect near Taiwan. Many Russian vehicle losses have been from thermal sights or being heard from miles away.
2. More fuel efficient than pure fossil fuel vehicles but has the raw power density of fossil fuel vehicles. Again important for Taiwan where, to maintain strategic surprise, many vehicles will need to drive themselves to the beach. Also important because some foreign powers might blockade crude oil. Russian buildup was discovered early while a hybrid wheeled vehicle fleet would be able to park at base until the last day when it would just drive itself to the front.
3. Higher power generation capability because now you can use the entire engine for electricity. Better ground based radar, laser, jammer, comm station, etc. Another Russian weakness.
Seems like it would be a good idea for the medium term (10-15 years) to electrify the army and navy.
Advantage of IEP and hybrid drive:
1. Lower tactical IR and acoustic signature as you can turn off engines and run on battery when near combat zones. This would especially be important in shallow littoral regions, beaches, forest, etc. Exactly what you expect near Taiwan. Many Russian vehicle losses have been from thermal sights or being heard from miles away.
2. More fuel efficient than pure fossil fuel vehicles but has the raw power density of fossil fuel vehicles. Again important for Taiwan where, to maintain strategic surprise, many vehicles will need to drive themselves to the beach. Also important because some foreign powers might blockade crude oil. Russian buildup was discovered early while a hybrid wheeled vehicle fleet would be able to park at base until the last day when it would just drive itself to the front.
3. Higher power generation capability because now you can use the entire engine for electricity. Better ground based radar, laser, jammer, comm station, etc. Another Russian weakness.
Seems like it would be a good idea for the medium term (10-15 years) to electrify the army and navy.
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