Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

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tphuang

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I expect to see wide-scale deployment of both 250kg and 125kg glide bombs within the next 5 years.

They'll have a basic GPS/INS version at low cost. But there's no reason they couldn't add laser guidance for a modest amount.
Then because they already have a SDB-1 munitions airframe, they might as well develop a more expensive SDB-2 equivalent with autonomous attack sensors.
I would also expect large numbers of JDAMs, given the technology is already here. It's something which they should be doing now.
It's something they should be doing, but so far they've only been using dual guidance 500 KG PGMs that cannot be dual packed due to the size of their fins. I think it would be a big moment if they can consistently carry 6 250 KG PGMs on fight jets.
If the US is involved, then I don't see a Penghu operation being successful. So there won't be a land base for long-range artillery or standard-range MLRS rockets.
How is US going to stop warships to Penghu and bombard it with naval gun or rocket/missile attacks from mainland or even air launched munitions? There is not a lot of place to hide for defenders. If PLA cannot quickly take Penghu, it should not be attempting a Taiwan invasion.

I was also thinking that if they succeed in the initial bombing on Ryuku island bases and USN ships are far away, they can move 052Ds close to Ryuku islands and assist in the follow on attacks.
The JH-7 has an integrated EW system plus a back-seater who can also operate EW. The J-10 doesn't have this.
Both platforms could integrate the same EW pod. So which platform is likely to have better electronic warfare and jamming capability?
J-10 came later, was testbed for the radar/EW suite on J-20s. J-10B was a huge milestone for PLAAF when it comes to radar/EW technology. J-10 series will receive upgrades since they will be in the air force until 2040s. It's on the same level technology wise as J-16 when it comes to EW suite. JH-7As mostly came into service in the early 2000s with no major upgrade programs and use an early mechanically scanned radar.
In 8 years time, China should have twice the "stock/inventory" of advanced weapons systems that it has today.
Focusing just on NGAD and the B-21 is the wrong metric. In the 5-10 year timeframe, there will likely only be a handful of these systems.

And beyond 10 years time, I think the Chinese military will be decisively accelerating ahead and leaving the US behind.
In general, I think China should be catching up to US military and surpassing it in some areas. However, due to the timing of certain programs, it's certain possible that the gap widens for a couple of years there. We will have to wait and see.

During the 5 years I was away, they really closed gaps due to the service entrance/mass production of J-20, J-16/D, KJ-500, WS-10 series, PL-15, 055, DF-41, naval aviation, Type 075, hypersonic missiles and numerous drones. I'm not sure if we should expect another 5 year period like the one that just passed. Maybe it will happen, but really depends on H-20 and 095.
 

tch1972

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Penghu is difficult to defend. However I would expect the island to be heavily mine sea and land. The fastest way in is to suppress the island air defences and conduct heli insertion. Once landing zone secured, more than half the battle won.

As for beachhead in Taiwan, all defensive positions and bunkers should be cleared with stand off weapons and artillery bombardments even before the first troop landed. The scenario we always see on clips of amphibious tanks firing while sailing towards beachhead shouldn't happened in actual ops.

Reinforcement routes need to be secured by airborne and heliborne troops.

The prerequisite is to establish total air and sea superiority
 

Michaelsinodef

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That's funny. There is a reason people are saying that the gap between the US and China is rapidly closing and will never (for the foreseeable future) start growing again.

"Current" as of 2021
View attachment 91123

And that's for 2025, 4 years later
View attachment 91124

And now you say 10 years later (assume 2032). Does anyone here really want to update the data to show the difference between the projected 2025 Chinese forces and 2032... Between 2021 and 2025 there was such big difference, imagine what would be the rate of progress between 2025 and 2032.

(The above data are referenced from here)
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Lmao that article, what a load of cope.
 

5unrise

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I don't know whether this belongs here, but I had a good chuckle, and other members probably will too.

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President Zelensky "declared on Saturday that the “international community” must help Taiwan resist Chinese “aggression” now, before Beijing attacks the poor little heavily-armed island."

Now, in case you don't trust RT, here is a western mainstream media essentially confirming the same thing:
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I mean, hasn't Ukraine had enough at this point?
 

ironborn

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I don't know whether this belongs here, but I had a good chuckle, and other members probably will too.

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President Zelensky "declared on Saturday that the “international community” must help Taiwan resist Chinese “aggression” now, before Beijing attacks the poor little heavily-armed island."

Now, in case you don't trust RT, here is a western mainstream media essentially confirming the same thing:
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I mean, hasn't Ukraine had enough at this point?
TBH, it's a bit words twisting on the media, MSM or RT otherwise, when Zelensky was asked the question by Josh Rogan of WPO, who is rabid anti-China the question, it's pre-planned the question, there is no doubt about it. Zelensky said it's too late to seek diplomatic solution after the conflict already started, it's best to find a diplomatic solution before the conflict on both sides, hence the "preemptive help".

Both western MSM and Russian media has their own motive to twist his words for their own purposes.
 

drowingfish

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Penghu is difficult to defend. However I would expect the island to be heavily mine sea and land. The fastest way in is to suppress the island air defences and conduct heli insertion. Once landing zone secured, more than half the battle won.

As for beachhead in Taiwan, all defensive positions and bunkers should be cleared with stand off weapons and artillery bombardments even before the first troop landed. The scenario we always see on clips of amphibious tanks firing while sailing towards beachhead shouldn't happened in actual ops.

Reinforcement routes need to be secured by airborne and heliborne troops.

The prerequisite is to establish total air and sea superiority
mining operation around penghu can happen but i suspect it will be limited for a few reasons. 1 mining ships will be concentrated in taiwan not penghu, it makes no sense to sail those small ships out to penghu and have them potentially stuck there or destroyed. 2 there will not be enough time to deploy mines around penghu, assuming attack on the islands were to happen quickly. 3 the idea of mines in the sea works the same way as it does on land, it will only work if mine fields are covered by fire, if you cannot lay fire onto a minefield, then attackers will simply demine the area.

i think that given the lack of depth on the penghu islands it will not take long to destroy key sensors and air defence units (they are mostly semi-mobile anyways). defenders there are also unlikely to get a lot of cover fire from taiwan because ROC commanders would want to reserve those for the main attack and not expose/expend them too early. if the PLA can disable penghu's defence within the first 24-48hrs, and conduct a hostomel type assault within the first 72hrs then there is a chance that the defenders may not be adequately prepared to put up a lot of resistance.

the neat thing about taking penghu, even more so than utilizing it as some sort of FOB, is that it dislodges taiwan's entire defence layout. currently taiwan's force disposition assumes penghu will cover the mid to mid-south sectors of the island. forces are therefore concentrated to the north and south ends. if penghu were to be taken, it would open the weak underbelly of taiwan's defence and necessitate significant redeployments. this will open some opportunities for the PLA to catch taiwanese forces in transit with airstrikes and deal serious damage.
 

tphuang

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This is interesting and not unexpected.
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Basically, SK sees no real danger from China. It would be shocking for me to see SK intervene in a war between US and China, because SK itself would inevitably get targeted by NK artillery.

This is the key
  • Seoul will continue to focus more on China over time — in part out of a sense of responsibility as a U.S. ally — but does not see any indication that China would consider attacking South Korea, the official said.
To me, this would indicate that if US backs out of a conflict with Taiwan, SK will automatically rely on China to protect it from NK and join China's supply chain.
 

tch1972

Junior Member
Taking Penghu can give PLA is great strategic and tactical advantage at very little cost consider Penghu is hard to defend. I cant find a reason for China not to attempt a landing of Penghu at the very first wave of attack.

On the contrary, Kinmen and Matsu are the safest if war breakout. Taiwanese independent advocates never considered these 2 outlier islands as part of Republic of Taiwan and can be given up.. They were merely using the 2 islands as a observation and intelligence outposts. I don't expect PLA to attack kinmen and Matsu but will conduct EW to cripple their intelligences and communication.

Moreover most islanders here still considered themselves as chinese unlike Taiwan.
 

tphuang

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Tag @ansy1968, given this is kind of a reply to the SCS thread.

If there is one thing the Ukraine conflict taught us, it would be that a large portion of American foreign policy makers regard China as its pre-eminent threat, regardless of the fact that China has not invaded anyone for 40 years or that China is far more interested in winning through trade + de-industrializing Western powers vs real war. The other thing we've seen is the desperation of Japan. Under Abe, Japan has aligned itself 100% of its foreign policy to following America. Japan of 15 years ago would probably not have followed America step by step in all the sanctioning of Russia. But now given its fading power status and worry about Chinese hegemony in East Asia, it is scared to death of that outcome. It is willing to follow America 100% despite having very little cultural link to America and getting completely de-industrialized by the vulture capitalism of Wall Street/shadow banking system following Plaza Accord. Japan of today has a very old population with very below replacement level birth rate, lack of natural resources and domestic industry is increasingly uncompetitive. Its economy by nominal GDP is less than what it was in 1995 and its national debt is 250%of GDP. The entire situation is only getting worse as the working age population vs welfare population ratio is continually shrinking. As such, Japan is holding onto its alliance with America with dear life while dreading the growing behemoth next door.

So any China/Taiwan situation will likely trigger the involvement of US/Japan if the conflict is not resolved in 30 days. This is assuming that America does not take the dramatic action of keeping 4 carriers that are either operating around westpac or able to surged to combat status (in 60 days) at all times.

So, what is the biggest threat facing China? I think there is the nuclear issue and also the submarine issue. Those are quite related. Shilao podcast did a length segment on the troubles facing China in the submarine area recently. If you are sitting somewhere in the PLAN command and planning out war games, the part that will give you the most trouble is how to find submarines. The threats are the USN Virginia class and the JMSDF diesel subs like Soryu/Taigei class. They present different problems. With the latter, if it disappears from its port, you now it can probably only go so far for 2 days before it needs to surface or rely on AIP to move at really slow speed (like 3/4 knots). Assuming Chinese MPAs are competent and able to tell when submarines surface, diesel submarines can only go so far traveling at 8 knots for 2 days. Diesel submarines that go any faster than that are probably going to be noisy and easily detectable. As such, PLAN will most likely be concerned about Japanese subs from Kyushu to Taiwan. While that is a large area, individual subs probably can be tracked if China has air/surface combatant superiority in the area. For the sake argument, I would assume that China has advantages in both through Air Force and ASBM/ballistic missiles against Japanese ships and military bases. Assuming that China has full complement of Y8/9 ASW aircraft, Z20F, diesel submarines, surface combatant, underwater gliders and underwater sonar network, it would give them a good chance of finding moving Japanese subs before they get within striking distance of Chinese capital ships. At worst, PLAN might be willing to sacrifice some of its less advanced diesel subs and smaller surface combatant in the process of finding and destroying Japanese subs. So while dangerous, I would say this is a manageable task if they had air/surface superiority.

Which then brings us to the much larger problem of the USN subs. Ia Virginia class disappears from Guam and moves around, PLAN might have no idea where it is until it surfaces somewhere 6 months later. That's the strategic disadvantage China faces from having really noisy nuclear subs. While the Chinese SSNs may have modern combat system and sonar systems, they are simply too noisy to be chasing around Virginia class, because they'd be dead in the water. As such, Chinese SSNs have to remain relatively close to air/surface protection and be used as additional ASW platform in finding USN subs. The trouble with that is just how large Sea/Ocean is. There is only so large of an area that each helicopter, ASW aircraft and surface ship can search for. Without getting cued up, it's really hard to actually track a quiet sub. 054A/056s are too slow and noisy due to their diesel engines. Also once you lower your TAS/VDS, you can't go that fast when you are sweeping an area for submarines. As more Z20Fs and Y-9 join service, that will increase the area that PLAN can actively search for USN subs while also protecting surface combatants and SSBNs (very important). Assuming that the most recent generation of SLBM by later part of this decade can reach continental USA from SCS, it would represent true naval based nuclear deterrence. I haven't followed the rumor mills enough to know the answer to this, but would assume this is something they should have by then. With 6 094s, they can probably get 2 out on patrol at all times. It's critical that PLAN can prevent Virginia class from attacking them. If you look at the map, SCS is actually a very large area. The island expansions allow them to fly land based aircraft from more places and install underwater network further out. With more ships, more helicopters, more gliders and larger underwater network, they can be confident about the range of area that 094s can operate from, making them a real deterrent. Keep in mind that while the earlier 056s were transferred to the coast guards, the ASW ones are still operational. They also, really ramped up production of 054A and the new 052D designed for Z20s. Even though they are not the most advanced platforms, PLAN knows that it needs more of these platforms to fight, take losses and find nuclear subs, even if just as a landing pad. With Cambodia support, they could also fly also operate aircraft out of their airport occasionally and expand on the covered area.

I will continue next part tomorrow.
 
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