Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

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pmc

Major
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Unimportant. And my argument was about China avoiding military solutions. It had nothing to do with the GDP of China.
you wrote its expensive and risky. which i agree as economic impact will be much higher for China and this is the most important factor not favoring a military solution. but this is not the case for Russia
Russia still uses its tactical aviation as a tool to harass and stop enemy air operations.
They used cruise missiles for fix targets and than air defense for interception. very rarely they used aviation for air combat.
It is not western style no fly zone concept. rather need to do air interception.
That is the same with the USSR. Russian air force's training and equipment are wholly inappropriate for China to use against Taiwan. China needs to be able to send in complex and large strike packages to shoot down enemy aircraft, neutralize air defenses, bomb airfields and then move on to the softening operations. It needs substantial SEAD and ISR capabilities to do the same against Japanese airfields in case the USA and Japan intervened. Russia would have it much better in Ukraine if its focus was the same too. Russia has monetary and strategic constraints like having 30-35 US-allied nations next to it on the East European Plain so what it is doing is probably a better choice for its own situation. But it is inappropriate for a large offensive operation in Ukraine. It would be even more inappropriate against Taiwan.
Ukraine dont have much modern airforce/air defense so there is no need to oversaturate a target. but this does not mean complex strike packages is not part of Ruaf training Both Tu-160M/Tu-95MSM projects are to increase ability of Ruaf to fire thousands of cruise missiles on a single takeoff rather than hundreds at much greater distances than one else from places that one else goes.. so why you you think there is monetary and strategi constraints?. they invest in stealthier, long ranges, faster and compact missiles rather than stealthier aircraft. it is doctorine that will win. the allied nations of Europe are irrelevant. Russia does not take them into account when designing next generation weopons. Salvo launch of 12 missiles from a single aircraft.
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Industrial production is very hard to reconfigure. Then there are the issues of legal matters and consumer preferences. Of course, China wasn't able to replace Western components the Russian industry uses in 3 months.
yup i know i follow it. it takes time but it just show even for generic electronic parts it take so long to replace. Russia is fortunate that it has large aviation industry so it can allocate work force there for next few years.
how would China deal with such big labor dislocation if it in same situation?
I can't see how this is relevant
When Lufthansa is in losses while Turkish/Middleastern Airlines making profits. how do you think German feel about it?. same situation with so many other things. I just dont think Japan/Singapore will put there neck on line for China once Europe decide for them especially Japanese decline relative to Europe. Japanese are using European Vaccines and increasingly rely on European technology for energy/aviation. This extra economic strength that make a difference in decision making.
Russia increasingly use Russian muslims in leadership role to manage Ukraine to demonstrate to that Georgian clown and wannabe German that Russian muslims are superior than him. They can built bombers but he can only built plastic drones and he is not strong enough to come the battlefield and he is certainly losing face in front of Germany because he cannot put sanctions when his investment going up in smoke in Ukraine and Europe. planning for such event takes years and certainly take into confidence others.
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Social media was used by Ukraine to mobilize people both in Ukraine and abroad. It was also used for collecting intelligence since it makes every civilian with a smartphone an intelligence collector. The footages that are coming out are being used for atrocity propaganda against Russia by the Western MSM. Shutting down civilian communications in the country you are doing offensive operations in is very beneficial. Ideally, the only content that should be reaching the people should be PRC propaganda during the war.
mobilization make society un-productive and engage them in frivolous work.
Of course there is a place for airborne operations. Preventing enemy withdrawals by landing forces behind withdrawing enemies, special force or recon team injections (as you mentioned), rapid reinforcement, etc... But airborne forces are not optimal for use against non-degraded enemies since they are light infantry-only forces. China can not depend on them to take over an airfield or port on their own. They will likely be used during initial landings to support amphibious forces who will be initially heavily outnumbered.
Ukraine is very land area with lots of Canals and Bridges. there is no way Armour/Artillery is present every where and they cannot travel when there is no bridge. Airborne assaults can create disruptions even in urban combat., create much more chaos in society, they can direct airpower to hit at right places. thats advantage of modern engineering when alot of things are becoming portable and autonomous like boats in water.
 

iioklwwelo

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6. China currently sits on top of the second largest cruise missile and largest ballistic missile arsenal in the world.

Where did you get this piece of information from?

It's unlikely that all countries would reveal the exact size of their inventories. Unless every single country is transparent about their arsenal and we have objectively pinpointed the location, distribution and type of every single ballistic and cruise missile in the arsenal of every country, such a proclamation is hard to defend.

Maybe, if you are the President of your country and your intelligence agency provides you with their intelligence, you might accept them at face value. Others might not be so eager to do the same.

Other than that, it's incredibly hard to believe any such proclamations can be trusted no matter who makes these claims.
 

BoraTas

Major
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Remember that they've reformed the conscription system with intakes twice a year and with initial training extended to 6 months before conscripts are sent to a unit.

So now infantry-heavy formations (which are disproportionately manned by Chinese conscripts who happen to all be volunteers) are fully manned all the time, and those soldiers have received a minimum of 6months training.

---
Previously it wasn't credible for the Chinese Air Force to achieve air superiority and allow the Chinese Navy to land large numbers of infantry onto Taiwan. So there was no point in focusing on infantry modernisation. But now there is.

But as I've mentioned before, I think the key thing is to develop small autonomous drones and then flood the area in a Taiwan ground campaign.
I agree with this. Especially UGVs can be very useful. Turkey has a vision of landing UGVs from unmanned landing craft to reduce casualties in amphibious operations. I would be surprised if China didn't have a similar vision. It likely has. But I would say air force and naval focus doesn't explain the late modernization of infantry equipment. Infantry equipment is cheap. Even an extremely high-end kit would cost around $10,000 for China. That is the same as what the US spends but in China that would buy a significantly higher-end kit. So it would only cost $2.5 billion for China to equip most of its infantry with extremely high-end equipment. I talk about sub-MOA rifles, quad tube night vision, helmets and armor plates using HMPE here. Why it didn't happen? Because PLA and most other militaries actually don't believe infantry equipment makes a difference beyond a point. This is probably also why the QBZ-191 is not particularly high-end.
Where did you get this piece of information from?

It's unlikely that all countries would reveal the exact size of their inventories. Unless every single country is transparent about their arsenal and we have objectively pinpointed the location, distribution and type of every single ballistic and cruise missile in the arsenal of every country, such a proclamation is hard to defend.

Maybe, if you are the President of your country and your intelligence agency provides you with their intelligence, you might accept them at face value. Others might not be so eager to do the same.

Other than that, it's incredibly hard to believe any such proclamations can be trusted no matter who makes these claims.
Nothing we civilians say is 100% trustable. In fact, even if it is a general claiming something about his own country's armed forces it is still not 100% credible because it can be disinfo. If you want certainties, stop following military affairs because nothing is 100% credible about these matters.
That's said China having the largest conventional BM arsenal in the world is quite a safe bet. The numbers around are huge and the US DoD explicitly stated that. I am copying from page 9 of the document. The document is from 2017.
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"The PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) controls the largest and most diverse missile force in the world,with an inventory of more than 2,000 ballistic and cruise missiles. This fact is significant because the U.S. has no comparable capability due to our adherence to the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia. (Approximately, 95% of the PLARF’s missiles would violate the INF if China was a signatory.)"
 

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
I think the biggest differences with regards to infantry in the last decades were the introduction of the Picatinny rails for adding modules to rifles, improved optics and thermal sights, better body armor, and improved battlefield medicine. The amount of deaths, if you look at Iraq vs previous conflicts for the US like Desert Storm, was significantly decreased because of body armor and improved battlefield medicine.

In the future things like exoskeletons or polymer cased ammo might become important. They are already available but not proven to be worthwhile yet.
 

Minm

Junior Member
Registered Member
cont from above



"Not that small" is relative.

Even if the PLA had an island as big as Guam to work with at Kiribati, they are still sitting ducks in that strategic geographical environment, and would require substantial force concentration (offensively and defensively) to be a viable staging area amidst a HIC.

UCAVs and strike fighters will be operating from land as part of the strike package against PLAN CSGs (in conjunction with land based B-21s carrying AShMs, SSNs, and potentially an anti ship capable LRHW in future, which I think will almost certainly be on the cards).
If we're projecting out to 2030s, strike UCAVs should be assumed to be part of the US inventory as much as for the PLA.




Yes, it will require the US to dedicate perhaps 100-200 missiles to cripple it during an initial first wave strike and then a number of sorties afterwards with PGMs to permanently take it out of commission.
No, they won't require CSGs to do so, and you can bet the US will plan its strategy in a manner that allows them to both frontload their their westpac surge with as many CSGs as possible while still retaining a significant capability to strike and destroy an isolated PLA air-naval station in Kiribati 8000km from the Chinese mainland.




I have nothing inherently against the idea of the PLA using Kiribati as a way of forcing the US to divide its forces

However I think any forward deployed presence to Kiribati (or other pacific island nations) must not simply be a sacrificial speed bump and act as a missile sponge.
It must have robust survivability, and clear capability or potential to carry out decisive offensive operations, all without detracting the PLA from being able to fight a comprehensive high end westpac conflict against frontloaded US forces.

That is to say, if the PLA was able to operate 8-10 CSGs within the second island chain/westpac to fight against a forward deployed US 6-8 CSGs, and if the PLA was able to operate 6-8 CSGs from Kiribati/central pacific to carry out offensive operations against Hawaii and/or San Diego (as well as to defend Kiribati itself from US strikes operating out of Hawaii, CONTUS and Australia), then I would agree that would be a very viable strategy.
To simultaneously operate 14-18 CSGs will likely require 20-25 CSGs in the fleet -- an enormous number. Not something that we can even entertain at this stage as a fantasy.


But if they only have 8 CSGs and 4 076s in the fleet by the late 2030s versus what the US will have by then... well sending 2 of those CSGs to Kiribati to operate, likely leaving only 3-4 CSGs operating within the westpac/second island chain at best.... that is just suicidal, and likely to see both the westpac/second island chain CSG force and the Kiribati CSG force suffer significant losses that result in at best a phyrric victory, or at worst an outright defeat.


If they have 8 CSGs, it would make far more sense to concentrate all of the operational CSGs (likely up to 5-6 of them, surged) in westpac to begin with, to be capable of comprehensively defeating US westpac forces and land based facilities in a rapid manner, rather than divide one's forces in the western and central pacific, where the central pacific would be so easily defeated by the enemy by virtue of strategic positioning and US offensive capabilities in the region, and where the US will not be required to commit any CSGs against a PLA base in Kiribati with 2 CSGs.
If a conflict between China and the US occurs, it will most likely be because of some American provocation on Taiwanese independence, to which China is forced to react militarily. An unprovoked American surprise attack is not likely and would cause huge reputational damage to them, potentially resulting in allies not taking part in the war.

So if it's up to China to initiate hostilities, any naval assets in a Pacific base won't be sitting ducks but they're going to be sailing somewhere in the ocean. The US may believe that they can destroy Chinese carriers with just a few bombers and missiles, but they aren't so arrogant as to assume Chinese stealth fighters on the carriers have zero chance of shooting down American bombers and cruise missiles. It would be highly reckless for the US to not keep a very large force to defend against the threat of Chinese ships close to the American east coast. California has many targets and if a Chinese carrier group slips through American defences it could destroy silicon valley. Maybe they won't need aircraft carriers to defend California, but they'll need to invest in some form of defence, taking away resources that they can use for attacks on the Chinese mainland
 

iioklwwelo

New Member
Registered Member
Nothing we civilians say is 100% trustable. In fact, even if it is a general claiming something about his own country's armed forces it is
still not 100% credible because it can be disinfo. If you want certainties, stop following military affairs because nothing is 100% credible about these matters.
That's said China having the largest conventional BM arsenal in the world is quite a safe bet. The numbers around are huge and the US DoD explicitly stated that. I am copying from page 9 of the document. The document is from 2017.
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"The PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) controls the largest and most diverse missile force in the world,with an inventory of more than 2,000 ballistic and cruise missiles. This fact is significant because the U.S. has no comparable capability due to our adherence to the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia. (Approximately, 95% of the PLARF’s missiles would violate the INF if China was a signatory.)"


Right you are. No point in saying that PLA sits on top of the largest and second largest arsenal of (cruise/ballistic) missiles in the world based on publicly released US disinformation.

Since such information is likely to be classified anyway, there is no point in comparing. Moreover, according to Zelensky, six days ago, Russians had already spent over 2,400 missiles (ballistic/cruise) in Ukraine and carried out over 3,000 sorties.

Whether we can trust Zelensky, Putin, Lavrov, Harris, Pentagon or other biased sources of information is best left to the readers to decide.

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Other sources, Western sources, had already published claims of more than 2,000 Russian missiles launched in Ukraine a few days earlier. It's implausible Russians would have exhausted 100%, or more, of their missile (ballistic/cruise) in only Ukraine within <100 days.
 

Coalescence

Senior Member
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It's been a few days but in case you haven't seen it

I saw some Twitter pundits stated that Taiwan should abandon purchasing expensive hardwares like F-16s and focus equipping all reserves with this weapon.
Are the really learning the wrong lessons from the Ukraine War? lmao. I hope the current Taiwan administration is not as stupid like Ukraine's.
 
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