Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

XiDada said:

Guess all those talks of "training for warn under realistic conditions" went nowhere then. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You practice your war plans during peacetime. The US isn't at war with anyone at the moment but they still practice these high tempo ops on a regular basis

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The us can print usd? It's 10-20k a flight hour.

XiDada said:

Guess all those talks of "training for warn under realistic conditions" went nowhere then. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You practice your war plans during peacetime. The US isn't at war with anyone at the moment but they still practice these high tempo ops on a regular basis

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Can you provide a source for the USAF sortie rates?

FairAndUnbiased said:

Can you provide a source for the USAF sortie rates?

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Here's one for the 173rd FW of the air national guard:

Source:

In 2003, the 173 FW flew eight aircraft in the morning go, and six aircraft in the
afternoon go (8-turn-6), with approximately 3800 programmed flying hours and 2800
sorties. In 2005, the 173 FW’s aircraft inventory increased from 18 Primary Assigned
Aircraft (PAA) to 21 PAA. With this increase came an increase in programed student
training and associated flying hours. In 2008, the 173 FW became the sole F-15C
Formal Training Unit (FTU) in the US, and has nearly doubled its student production in
the past five years. In 2013, it flew a 10-turn-8 flying schedule and executed 4700 hours
with culminating in 3800 sorties; a 23% increase in flying hours and a 35% increase in
sorties. In 2014, to meet Combat Air Force student production throughput, programmed
flying training requires a 12-turn-10 flying operation flexing to an occasional 14-turn-10.

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Here's another one:

The schedulers in the 524th expect to be able to fly a 12 front on Monday through
Friday with two go’s each day. In order to converge on a schedule in the LCOM which
will equate to similar numbers as what the 524th actually scheduled, a 12 turn 12 was
simulated Monday through Thursday and a 12 turn 6 was scheduled on Friday. In the
end, 5672 sorties were scheduled in the LOCM scenario.

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And this is just from me searching: "12 turn 12" USAF.

The USAF operates at a level that is simply unmatched by anyone else in the world. And as impressive as the progress China has made, it's still a far cry from what the USAF practices on a regular basis.

XiDada said:

Guess all those talks of "training for warn under realistic conditions" went nowhere then. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You practice your war plans during peacetime. The US isn't at war with anyone at the moment but they still practice these high tempo ops on a regular basis

Click to expand...

The USAF doesn't generally practice its high tempo ops in Chinese airspace, either. Blitzo is correct that these military exercises were mainly a political signalling exercise. Of course they would have used it as an actual exercise and learned lessons from it, but its primary function was not actually as an exercise, it was to signal to the US and Taiwan that it was serious. They need space to escalate the seriousness of their signalling, if they immediately go to a realistic war's worth of operational tempo over Taiwan what further escalation is left before they have to pull the trigger and actually restart the war? If they have no further space for escalation that's a very dangerous position to be in, much more likely to lead to war.

XiDada said:

Here's one for the 173rd FW of the air national guard:

Source:

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Here's another one:

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And this is just from me searching: "12 turn 12" USAF.

The USAF operates at a level that is simply unmatched by anyone else in the world. And as impressive as the progress China has made, it's still a far cry from what the USAF practices on a regular basis.

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How does this reconcile with average per pilot flight times which are similar? And are your 2003-2005 sources during the height of the Iraq War and War on Terror representative of the current situation?

Now Barnes comes along to report that U.S. pilots are flying only 120 hours or less per year, a drop of over 50 percent from a decade ago.

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In 2014, additional cuts led to shortages of spare parts and aircraft maintenance workers. Fighter pilots, who once averaged over 200 flying hours a year, struggled to get 120 hours that year.

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Chinese fighter pilots appear to be flying 150 hours a year, Mr. Venable estimates based on available data and anecdotal reports from pilots who have operated in the region. Caveats are in order—Chinese pilots haven’t been tested in a fight. But consistent hours, Mr. Venable explains, “translate directly into combat capability.”

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The only way to have the same flight hours but lower sortie generation rate is longer flight time per sortie, but sortie flight times are set by mission.

Is PLAAF is launching significantly longer ranged missions than USAF is?

XiDada said:

Fair enough. I'll defer to you here. But I still think the PLAAF sortie generation rate is still behind that of the USAF.

So what I did now is looking at the number of Su-30s making incursions because there's only a single base that operates them in the ETC, making it a good litmus test to help determine single base sortie generation

Looking at the reported number of Su-30s being sent up, the largest day was Aug 5th when 24x Su-30s crossed the median line. If we assume that this was a 12 turn 12 operation, then we can get an idea for how their sortie rates can be sustained from that single airbase.

The next day was 10, then 8, 8, 9, 6, 4, 6, 4, and 8. So potentially:

• 5 turn 5
• 4 turn 4
• 4 turn 4
• 4 turn 5 or 5 turn 4
• 3 turn 3
• 2 turn 2
• 3 turn 3
• 2 turn 2
• 4 turn 4

Now. We don't know if more didn't cross the line and the ROCMOD isn't giving any details on those. But the PLAAF did not launch any other 24x Su-30s crossing ops after the 5th. And today was the first day that no Su-30s made the crossing.

So from my perspective, what I see is that they sustained 1 day of 12 turn 12, and then had to reduce operations from that single base.

Again. A lot of other factors may go into why they aren't putting more airframes up but Occam's razor suggests that it's because they needed the the recovery time after a high tempo op.

The fact that they were able to carry out further operations after a day of 12 turn 12 from the same airbase is impressive in its own right and shows that they've made great strides in improving their ability to sustain these kinds of ops. But the immediate decrease right after the 24x airframes, with 2 days left to the officially declared exercises, sheds a bit more light on their sortie production rates.

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Thanks for the response, but I think there are two major overriding (indeed, crippling) flaws in your overall explanation that you've developed.


First is interpreting recent ETC sorties as being "reflective of their maximal sortie generation capability".
I addressed this in my last post, but this assumption is basically where you seem to believe they are exerting maximal ETC sortie generation capability in recent days/weeks in response to Pelosi's visit, and that the highest number of sorties we've seen are the true ETC sortie generation peak.
On a scale of 1 to 10, with "1" being the lowest sortie generation rate ETC can do, and "10" being the highest sortie generation rate ETC can do, you seem to be arguing that the 50 aircraft that ETC were able to send near the strait on a day represents a "10".

However, this comes into the problem I discussed on my last post -- "maximal ETC sortie generation" is a form of very intense military signaling that is among the highest that the PLA can do, so you're basically arguing believe this is one of the PLA's most severe and serious military signaling they can do only a couple of rungs short of war.

But that makes absolutely no military or geopolitical sense at all -- yes the PRC considers Pelosi's visit to be an escalation by the US (and thus the PRC responded with escalation of their own), but it is not so intense that the PRC is on a war footing for the ETC's PLAAF to jump to a "10" for their sortie generation rate.
Furthermore, considering the rest of the services the PLA has in ETC between the PLARF, PLAN and PLAGF, their signaling in the immediate days after the Pelosi visit were also all very much only a tiny drop of their true capabilities, so why wouldn't that also be the case for the PLAAF?

Based on all of the above, I'm surprised that you've interpreted the PLA's air sortie pattern as going from "maximal" to "reduced from maximal".
It seems that you've interpreted the ETC's air sortie trend as going from "10" on a few days, then "reducing" it to "4-5" for a number of days, then going back to "10".
To me, I see the same pattern, but I see it more as the ETC's air sortie trend going from "3" on a few days, then "reducing" it to a "1-2" for a number of days, then going back to a "2-3" for a few days -- and that the change of their air sortie trend over the weeks is reactive depending on actions that the US takes in relation to Taiwan, rather than reflecting the limits of PLA sortie generation capability.



Second, the other issue is your referencing to the USAF.

It seems to me that you've already made up your mind that you believe the PLA's air sortie generation capability is already below that of the USAF, but I cannot quite understand your reasoning when if you don't provide a number for what you believe the USAF's air sortie generation capability is, nor if you don't explain "how much lower" you think the PLA's air sortie generation capability is compared to the USAF. Is it 90% of the USAF, or 80%, or 70% or 50%, or 30%, or 10%?
Personally, I agree that the PLA's air sortie generation capability is likely different to that of the USAF, however depending on which theater command/area of responsibility, and which brigade/squadron it is, I do not see a reason to believe that the PLA's air sortie generation capability is necessarily wholesale all lower than that of the USAF's across the board for each category of aircraft depending on their basing and location.

XiDada said:

Guess all those talks of "training for warn under realistic conditions" went nowhere then. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You practice your war plans during peacetime. The US isn't at war with anyone at the moment but they still practice these high tempo ops on a regular basis

Click to expand...

Yes, but why do you think the PLA would be doing large scale, high intensity air training in the ETC at the Taiwan Strait right now?

The PLA has air bases in central China for large scale, high intensity exercises that they do regularly, but conducting such an exercise at the Taiwan Strait would not be done unless they wanted to signal that they were outright preparing for actual war.

XiDada said:

Fair enough. I'll defer to you here. But I still think the PLAAF sortie generation rate is still behind that of the USAF.

So what I did now is looking at the number of Su-30s making incursions because there's only a single base that operates them in the ETC, making it a good litmus test to help determine single base sortie generation

Looking at the reported number of Su-30s being sent up, the largest day was Aug 5th when 24x Su-30s crossed the median line. If we assume that this was a 12 turn 12 operation, then we can get an idea for how their sortie rates can be sustained from that single airbase.

The next day was 10, then 8, 8, 9, 6, 4, 6, 4, and 8. So potentially:

• 5 turn 5
• 4 turn 4
• 4 turn 4
• 4 turn 5 or 5 turn 4
• 3 turn 3
• 2 turn 2
• 3 turn 3
• 2 turn 2
• 4 turn 4

Now. We don't know if more didn't cross the line and the ROCMOD isn't giving any details on those. But the PLAAF did not launch any other 24x Su-30s crossing ops after the 5th. And today was the first day that no Su-30s made the crossing.

So from my perspective, what I see is that they sustained 1 day of 12 turn 12, and then had to reduce operations from that single base.

Again. A lot of other factors may go into why they aren't putting more airframes up but Occam's razor suggests that it's because they needed the the recovery time after a high tempo op.

The fact that they were able to carry out further operations after a day of 12 turn 12 from the same airbase is impressive in its own right and shows that they've made great strides in improving their ability to sustain these kinds of ops. But the immediate decrease right after the 24x airframes, with 2 days left to the officially declared exercises, sheds a bit more light on their sortie production rates.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the response, but I think there are two major overriding (indeed, crippling) flaws in your overall explanation that you've developed.


First is interpreting recent ETC sorties as being "reflective of their maximal sortie generation capability".
I addressed this in my last post, but this assumption is basically where you seem to believe they are exerting maximal ETC sortie generation capability in recent days/weeks in response to Pelosi's visit, and that the highest number of sorties we've seen are the true ETC sortie generation peak.
On a scale of 1 to 10, with "1" being the lowest sortie generation rate ETC can do, and "10" being the highest sortie generation rate ETC can do, you seem to be arguing that the 50 aircraft that ETC were able to send near the strait on a day represents a "10".

However, this comes into the problem I discussed on my last post -- "maximal ETC sortie generation" is a form of very intense military signaling that is among the highest that the PLA can do, so you're basically arguing believe this is one of the PLA's most severe and serious military signaling they can do only a couple of rungs short of war.

But that makes absolutely no military or geopolitical sense at all -- yes the PRC considers Pelosi's visit to be an escalation by the US (and thus the PRC responded with escalation of their own), but it is not so intense that the PRC is on a war footing for the ETC's PLAAF to jump to a "10" for their sortie generation rate.
Furthermore, considering the rest of the services the PLA has in ETC between the PLARF, PLAN and PLAGF, their signaling in the immediate days after the Pelosi visit were also all very much only a tiny drop of their true capabilities, so why wouldn't that also be the case for the PLAAF?

Based on all of the above, I'm surprised that you've interpreted the PLA's air sortie pattern as going from "maximal" to "reduced from maximal".
It seems that you've interpreted the ETC's air sortie trend as going from "10" on a few days, then "reducing" it to "4-5" for a number of days, then going back to "10".
To me, I see the same pattern, but I see it more as the ETC's air sortie trend going from "3" on a few days, then "reducing" it to a "1-2" for a number of days, then going back to a "2-3" for a few days -- and that the change of their air sortie trend over the weeks is reactive depending on actions that the US takes in relation to Taiwan, rather than reflecting the limits of PLA sortie generation capability.



Second, the other issue is your referencing to the USAF.

It seems to me that you've already made up your mind that you believe the PLA's air sortie generation capability is already below that of the USAF, but I cannot quite understand your reasoning when if you don't provide a number for what you believe the USAF's air sortie generation capability is, nor if you don't explain "how much lower" you think the PLA's air sortie generation capability is compared to the USAF. Is it 90% of the USAF, or 80%, or 70% or 50%, or 30%, or 10%?
Personally, I agree that the PLA's air sortie generation capability is likely different to that of the USAF, however depending on which theater command/area of responsibility, and which brigade/squadron it is, I do not see a reason to believe that the PLA's air sortie generation capability is necessarily wholesale all lower than that of the USAF's across the board for each category of aircraft depending on their basing and location.

Blitzo said:

I do not see a reason to believe that the PLA's air sortie generation capability is necessarily wholesale all lower than that of the USAF's across the board for each category of aircraft depending on their basing and location.

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+ Maintenance per flight hour would come into play as the jets get turned around, so the sortie-rate curves would diverge with time, even if they both start at the same rate. I'm curious about what those curves are for Flanker/Eagles, J-10/Vipers etc. comparisons.

XiDada said:

Single day sortie vs sustained sorties following that single day is the main focus here.

The exercises ran from the 4th to the 7th, but su-30 sorties fell by 50% after a single day (the 5th) and the exercises were extended by a day so if they were capable of sustaining the ops, they would've continued churning out 5 turn 5 or 6 turn 6. But they didn't.

And again: I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong. The PLAAF continuing to launch su-30s after a day of 12 turn 12 is already impressive in its own right. But nothing they're doing suggests that they have the capacity to maintain such an aggressive sortie generation rate.

Because ultimately, China has to do more than launch a single wave of airframes for a Taiwan scenario. They need to launch a continuous flow of sorties so that maximum pressure can be applied or they'll lose the initiative.

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Let me break this down for you. In order for your conclusion that the PLAAF cannot sustain a high level of sortie generation to hold, you would need to assume:
A. All of the sorties generated entered Taiwan's ADIZ
B. All of sorties entering the ADIZ are accurately counted by the ROCMOD
C. The sorties generated represents the maximum or near maximum of the ETC
D. The decrease in sorties counted by the ROCMOD is due solely to the PLAAF unable to keep up


The problem is: all 4 of these are terrible assumptions.
A cannot be assumed because not all PLAAF aircrafts need to enter the ADIZ in order to be effective in a combat scenario. Stand off weapons like the KD-83 for example can be fired from Chinese airspace.
B cannot be assumed because the ROCMOD is known to undercount the number of PLAAF aircrafts and to arbitrarily assign their identity.
C cannot be assumed because it is obviously not true. The total OOB for the ETC vastly exceeds the number of sorties counted by the ROCMOD.
D cannot be assumed due a variety of confounding factors, including the fact the exercise is calibrated to send a message without getting a reaction.

Which is to say, yours is a very weak conclusion based on very speculative assumptions. And furthermore it is contradicted by common sense. An Air Force would need to be epically incompetent not to be able to keep up with a sortie generation rate of 1/4 sortie per plane per day.

XiDada said:

Ensure neutrality among China's neighbors in order to prevent others from seeking opportunities to strike against China

• The PLA has arguably already failed this most important point. There's a reason why the CCP continues to emphasize that the party controls the guns throughout the years - it is because at the local level, commanders operate with near impunity and would frequently escalate situations to get noticed for promotion
• Chinese coast guard captains in the South China Sea have the freedom to improvise, and there have been incidents of them taking actions that are more aggressive than necessary for the sake of promotion. These aggressive actions tend to not be reported up to the CMC and is detrimental to China's foreign policy vis-a-vis her Southeast Asian neighbors.
• The same is true on the Indian border, brigade and battalion commanders have a lot more freedom to simply improvise on their interpretation of the loosely defined orders of "defend the borders" to respond aggressively, creating crises that make India feel the need to respond to.
• Within the foreign ministry, "wolf warrior" diplomats are aggressive for the same reason - hopes of being noticed by superiors for promotion.
• Taken together, local tactical victories can become strategic blunders, as they foster an image of China that is much more aggressive than what the central party intends.

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As for the description of this paragraph, I would like to see the exact reference source.
These contents make me feel that they are describing IJA before World War II.

At least, Indians are often the main instigators of border conflicts.