Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

I think that Taiwan air defence can distinguish J-6 from other fighters, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to release the plane types they identify in those press releases. That being said, they would still pose a certain problem for target prioritization.

Does PLA really need so many of this kind of drone? Russia can’t afford to blanket Ukraine in missiles because the country is big. Taiwan is much smaller. Plus their Air Force is not effective in SEAD, which is limiting their ability to conduct proper air strikes which should be more effective than these drones.

FairAndUnbiased said:

bombsights are expensive due to the precision optics involved as well as flight control software to move the plane in such a way that the bombsights actually work. A suicide drone just has to fly into something and can use cheap satellite navigation chips and commercial cameras.

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It depends on what your target is. Something like a building or powerplant doesn't need too much accuracy.

Besides there are VTOL drones which can hover over a site. This war has shown you can drop dumb bombs pretty accurately with cheap commercial drones.

The main lesson to draw is that bigger isn't better when it comes to drones.

tphuang said:

Why would China want to use these low tech drones when it has so many better drones?

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Cheap has its usefulness. If you launch a whole bunch of cheap drones at someone they will have the choice to either use far more expensive missile's to shoot them down or they let them go through and let them hit their targets.

Its a economic war of attrition of sorts. You can launch drones worth thousands of dollars they will have to respond with missile's worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to shoot them down.

And if you are able to hit things like fuel depots and industrial facilities with these cheap drones the damage caused would be the multiple's of the cost of these drones.

Franklin said:

Cheap has its usefulness. If you launch a whole bunch of cheap drones at someone they will have the choice to either use far more expensive missile's to shoot them down or they let them go through and let them hit their targets.

Its a economic war of attrition of sorts. You can launch drones worth thousands of dollars they will have to respond with missile's worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to shoot them down.

And if you are able to hit things like fuel depots and industrial facilities with these cheap drones the damage caused would be the multiple's of the cost of these drones.

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Beside the cheapness of these drones. There is also the industrial production capabilties to consider. It’s a lot easier and faster to assemble 100 cheap drones than to build 100 PGMs or other advanced munitions. Better to spam these drones against less valuable targets and reserve the more advanced munitions for more valuable targets. Why waste the more precious munitions during a conflict if there is an alternative that’s more plentiful and just as effective against certain targets.

caudaceus said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1572718573457666048

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Patchwork explained it quite well. The entire scenario here is ridiculous. This is a pitch to sell from us mic rather than a helpful scenario.

Franklin said:

Cheap has its usefulness. If you launch a whole bunch of cheap drones at someone they will have the choice to either use far more expensive missile's to shoot them down or they let them go through and let them hit their targets.

Its a economic war of attrition of sorts. You can launch drones worth thousands of dollars they will have to respond with missile's worth hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to shoot them down.

And if you are able to hit things like fuel depots and industrial facilities with these cheap drones the damage caused would be the multiple's of the cost of these drones.

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Except they do not need suicide drones for that. They can just fly over ucavs and attack hit ground attack missiles anytime they see a moving target. This is much better strategy.

People, china has better equipment and can retain persistent isr. Why would it need to utilize Iranian strategy?

tphuang said:

Patchwork explained it quite well. The entire scenario here is ridiculous. This is a pitch to sell from us mic rather than a helpful scenario.

Except they do not need suicide drones for that. They can just fly over ucavs and attack hit ground attack missiles anytime they see a moving target. This is much better strategy.

People, china has better equipment and can retain persistent isr. Why would it need to utilize Iranian strategy?

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suicide drones are a good strike weapon. they are long ranged, accurate, hard to shoot down, and most of all, cheap and expendable. they're basically a cruise missile with a propeller engine rather than a jet one. Imagine how easy and cheap that is.

cheap means you can get WW2 scale of production numbers like 50k, 100k, etc rather than modern production numbers like 1k, 2k. 100k Shahed-136 equivalents with slightly longer range would absolutely devastate certain enemies and destroy nearly their entire regional air force on the ground.

I used to not be a believer but seeing the end results and thinking about the logic, it makes so much sense.

tphuang said:

Except they do not need suicide drones for that. They can just fly over ucavs and attack hit ground attack missiles anytime they see a moving target. This is much better strategy.

People, china has better equipment and can retain persistent isr. Why would it need to utilize Iranian strategy?

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Imagine hitting American bases in the Ryukyu Islands with a few thousands cheap drones

vincent said:

Imagine hitting American bases in the Ryukyu Islands with a few thousands cheap drones

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a few thousand? China makes millions of washing machines and motorbikes a year.

FairAndUnbiased said:

suicide drones are a good strike weapon. they are long ranged, accurate, hard to shoot down, and most of all, cheap and expendable. they're basically a cruise missile with a propeller engine rather than a jet one. Imagine how easy and cheap that is.

cheap means you can get WW2 scale of production numbers like 50k, 100k, etc rather than modern production numbers like 1k, 2k. 100k Shahed-136 equivalents with slightly longer range would absolutely devastate certain enemies and destroy nearly their entire regional air force on the ground.

I used to not be a believer but seeing the end results and thinking about the logic, it makes so much sense.

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You know what else they can deliver against Taiwan that's cheap, accurate and a lot harder to intercept? The 370 mm rockets from pch191. Why in the world are people so obsessed about some cheap slow Iranian drones? Against any modern anti drone system, the vast majority of them would get shot down with really cheaply. And with their speed, they simply won't do as damage as a pch191 rocket.

On top of that, these "suicide drones" are in reality just slow low flying missiles. A gj2 can carry many kd missiles that would be lower cost and can be used to fire at any moving target.

People, china has a lot of good stuff. It doesn't need to revert to a Russian Iranian strategy.