China has never listened to either modern Russia or US on doctrine, the book was burned long ago. Never worry about Chinese generals listening to foreigners. That will never happen again since the Qing Dynasty's
Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario
- Thread starter tphuang
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Absolutely. Penghui Islands on the west coast, Green and Orchid Islands on the east coast of the main Taiwan Island are three of the key initial footholds PLA must secure quickly.
The only one that can and probably is willing to provide US help to a significant degree is Japan. Despite the confidence level of nut cases in Australian military, they simply don't have the means to really help US.
So, if we do get to a war scenario, then the two possibilities are US intervening early on and US not prepositioned to intervene.
If America already has all of its forces positioned in a war to allow for intervening from the onset of the war, then it doesn't make sense to mount landing of Taiwan itself, since that would just take resources away from the main fight. They can just take Penghu island, put artillery on there and the goal would be to keep Taiwan from assisting US. Keep Taiwanese bases unusable throughout the conflict. I'd assume if they can beat back American forces, then Taiwanese government would just surrender.
If America is not prepositioned to intervene in any significant way, then China would need sufficient force to be able to defeat Taiwan quickly before America can intervene.
For the former, you dissuade US "allies" by making sure that your missiles can very quickly hit those bases. My guess is that only Japan will offer their bases an help America in significant way.
What is your opinion on the defensibility of Penghu Island (against Taiwan and the US) after China takes it ? Love to hear your thoughts as well as others' about this.
To set the stage, the Penghu Airport has a 3000 m runway and the Magong Harbor is capable of servicing cruise liners. So it is an instant military base that can service all types of PLAAF planes and PLAN ships up to Type 55, may be even Type 75 LHD.
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it is extremely defensible with mines, SAMs, artillery and air cover from the mainland. they would need to sail amphibs into the Taiwan straits which is outright not possible.
Depends on how much it gets attacked and how much resource they devote to defend it. Aside from being able to put Taiwan inside of the standard artillery range, there is some value from just having another military base that US military would need to attack due to its closeness to the battle area.
It's not any closer to Ryuku island chain than southeast coastal part of China. So it doesn't provide any additional value from that point of view. I think taking Penghu would be a logical first step along with cutting communication, dealing huge damages to Taiwan's military infrastructure. At while point, you can put artillery on there. That along with drones might be able to allow PLAAF to save a lot of PGMs and cruise missiles that they'd want to use against further away targets. The Russians have shown that with drones, you can do a lot of damge through artillery. And China would have more advanced UCAVs that it can be used to both attack and provide ISR to its artillery units.
I'm not sure if this article exists in the forum, but it was recently translated into Chinese so it caught my attention:
——“If your opponent tries to invade you, and every military age man [and] woman is armed, and they have a little bit of training, that can be a very effective use,” Milley said.
That sounds really stupid. It never occurred to the bigwigs in the US that any drive to bring back universal compulsory military service on the island of Taiwan would cause the ruling party to lose support.
——“If your opponent tries to invade you, and every military age man [and] woman is armed, and they have a little bit of training, that can be a very effective use,” Milley said.
That sounds really stupid. It never occurred to the bigwigs in the US that any drive to bring back universal compulsory military service on the island of Taiwan would cause the ruling party to lose support.
agreed, i have been pretty vocal about taking penghu first before moving on taiwan proper. although i dont think penghu's air field is very useful to PLAAF because Taiwan itself isnt that far away in the first place. but it does make a good forward base for UAV's and helicopters. in fact one of the ways i envisioned penghu to be seized would be a mix of hostomel and FOB cobra. part of the islands would have to be occupied by force, then a large contingent of helicopters will move in a lot of infantry to clear the rest.
the thing with penghu is that it is made up of many small islets, i believe most of the critical assets are concentrated on the two larger islets on the west side. we are talking about anti ship and anti air assets including sensors. if those two islets were to be seized quickly then the rest can be worked on with a bit less urgency.
while nothing should be discounted in war, the chances of ROC being able to put together a counter offensive to reclaim penghu once if is lost to PLA is just so negligible. an offensive operation of that nature requires so much effort that i dont think they will even consider it.
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