Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

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Chilled_k6

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Not really sure if the whole conversation here is about Taiwan, or somewhere further out.

If it's about Taiwan, I think the ASN-301 can be pretty useful if the launch truck (or perhaps just the launch platform) is placed on container ships and drones launched en masse from there. That way it can easily be disguised. The container ships can be off the coast when this happens, it doesn't need to travel the full distance of the Taiwan strait, and it would catch the island's defense by surprise.

In Ukraine, the signature on radar for the Shahed-136s is so small, radar has a hard time distinguishing between that and a bird. Used in combination with ballistic and cruise missiles, 370mm rocket artillery, converted J-6 suicide drones, etc. a swarm of hundreds of these will guarantee to overwhelm the air defenses. There's so many different flight profiles to track. How many targets can Taiwan's radars track? Let alone engage?

I would add that Russia doesn't use it's Shahed-136s in isolation. They use it in combo with cruise missiles too.
 
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Minm

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Chilled_k6 said:
Not really sure if the whole conversation here is about Taiwan, or somewhere further out.

If it's about Taiwan, I think the ASN-301 can be pretty useful if the launch truck (or perhaps just the launch platform) is placed on container ships and drones launched en masse from there. That way it can easily be disguised. The container ships can be off the coast when this happens, it doesn't need to travel the full distance of the Taiwan strait, and it would catch the island's defense by surprise.

In Ukraine, the signature on radar for the Shahed-136s is so small, radar has a hard time distinguishing between that and a bird. Used in combination with ballistic and cruise missiles, 370mm rocket artillery, converted J-6 suicide drones, etc. a swarm of hundreds of these will guarantee to overwhelm the air defenses. There's so many different flight profiles to track. How many targets can Taiwan's radars track? Let alone engage?
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How expensive is a Luneburg lens? Why not put those on cheap drones and give the enemy some more decoys to shoot down? And really confuse everyone's radar.
 
tphuang

tphuang

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vincent said:
Volume of fire. Cheap drones can be launched anywhere, not dependent on airstrips or ships
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You can bet that the further we get into this conflict, the anti-slow drone defense will be getting better. Even now, the Ukrainians are claiming 70% interception rate. China's silent hunter is intercepting a lot better than that with the Saudis. I don't see how America would be incapable of producing something that can intercept like 80 to 90% of a slow moving drone.

Again, I anticipate China will be using unmanned air power/ground machines extensively. How that will look like remains to be seen. I just don't see how launch a bunch of cheap suicide drones can be better at attacking defense than persistent MALE UCAVs. I expect China to have more options.
 
ZeEa5KPul

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vincent said:
Volume of fire. Cheap drones can be launched anywhere, not dependent on airstrips or ships
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Let's look at the cost-to-weight of explosives ratio. A Shahed 136 is said to cost as low as $10,000 and the highest figure I've seen for payload is 50kg. That's $200 per kilo of explosive at the very least. The smallest American JDAM has a weight of 250 kg and a cost of $25,000; that's $100 per kilo. It falls to $25 if it's a one ton bomb. Even under the most generous assumptions for the drone and the most miserly for the JDAM, it's still twice the cost.

Add to this that a sortie by a single strike fighter can drop far more weight on target than a drone swarm. Drone swarms are useless against hardened targets, so that's an entire class of targets that can't even be attacked. The only reason Russia is using these drones is because they have no better alternatives. To this day they haven't managed to establish air superiority over Ukraine, need I say more?
 
vincent

vincent

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tphuang said:
You can bet that the further we get into this conflict, the anti-slow drone defense will be getting better. Even now, the Ukrainians are claiming 70% interception rate. China's silent hunter is intercepting a lot better than that with the Saudis. I don't see how America would be incapable of producing something that can intercept like 80 to 90% of a slow moving drone.

Again, I anticipate China will be using unmanned air power/ground machines extensively. How that will look like remains to be seen. I just don't see how launch a bunch of cheap suicide drones can be better at attacking defense than persistent MALE UCAVs. I expect China to have more options.
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China’s industries can churn out thousands of cheap drones with fibreglass bodies, moped engines, 100kg high explosive warheads and cellphone electronics everyday at a fraction of what Shahed-136 costs.

Can the American air defense systems on Ryukyu Islands shoot down hundreds, if not thousands of cheap drones every single day coming at every direction? and like Western MSM like to say, at what cost? At the mean time, Chinese good stuffs like DF-17, DF-21, DF-100, J-16 with SDB glide bombs and KD-series missiles, etc are attacking those air defense systems.
 
Blitzo

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vincent said:
China’s industries can churn out thousands of cheap drones with fibreglass bodies, moped engines, 100kg high explosive warheads and cellphone electronics everyday at a fraction of what Shahed-136 costs.

Can the American air defense systems on Ryukyu Islands shoot down hundreds, if not thousands of cheap drones every single day coming at every direction? and like Western MSM like to say, at what cost? At the mean time, Chinese good stuffs like DF-17, DF-21, DF-100, J-16 with SDB glide bombs and KD-series missiles, etc are attacking those air defense systems.
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The role of swarming, relatively affordable long range weapons like that (which China already has as JWS-01) can augment other fires.

However they are only complementary to other more complex and more expensive, high end fires first, and the viability or non-viability of these sort of suicide drones will be wholly dependent on said high end fires.

And even in a context whereby these swarming suicide drones may be viable, their application will be dependent on the target set. The warhead weight of these sort of suicide drones like JWS-01, Harpy, Harop, Shahed 136, is generally below 50kg, and more often 20-30kg.

They are useful against very soft targets, but against anything that is slightly more structurally impressive or against a runway, their damage will be very limited.



I expect such weapons like JWS-01 to be useful in the PLA's arsenal in a high end fight, but the overall point is that they are not worth getting too excited over.

The idea of spamming them in a low cost fashion day after day is dependent on the successful application of other high end systems and airpower for conducting offensive strikes, SEAD/DEAD, EW. Without that, then yes, modern point defense systems can significantly complicate and can defend against slow suicide drones.
Only after that, does spamming JWS-01 type weapons become a more viable option, but if you want to take out hardened aircraft shelters, larger buildings, fuel and ammo depots, runways, you definitely want something with larger payloads.
 
vincent

vincent

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Blitzo said:
The role of swarming, relatively affordable long range weapons like that (which China already has as JWS-01) can augment other fires.

However they are only complementary to other more complex and more expensive, high end fires first, and the viability or non-viability of these sort of suicide drones will be wholly dependent on said high end fires.

And even in a context whereby these swarming suicide drones may be viable, their application will be dependent on the target set. The warhead weight of these sort of suicide drones like JWS-01, Harpy, Harop, Shahed 136, is generally below 50kg, and more often 20-30kg.

They are useful against very soft targets, but against anything that is slightly more structurally impressive or against a runway, their damage will be very limited.



I expect such weapons like JWS-01 to be useful in the PLA's arsenal in a high end fight, but the overall point is that they are not worth getting too excited over.

The idea of spamming them in a low cost fashion day after day is dependent on the successful application of other high end systems and airpower for conducting offensive strikes, SEAD/DEAD, EW. Without that, then yes, modern point defense systems can significantly complicate and can defend against slow suicide drones.
Only after that, does spamming JWS-01 type weapons become a more viable option, but if you want to take out hardened aircraft shelters, larger buildings, fuel and ammo depots, runways, you definitely want something with larger payloads.
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Every AIM-120, Patriot, manpads, etc that are spent on cheap drones is one less available to take down PLA's J-16, DF-100, KD-series, etc. The value exchange will be hugely in China's favour.

The drones can be equipped with cheap cellphone optics and some image recognition algorithm for enemy planes (on the ground) and land systems. If the drones discovered said targets on their pre-determined destinations, they can attack those targets instead.

50kg of explosives may only create a relatively small crater on runways, but if there are tens of them exploding along the runway, with the rubbles generated by the explosions, how fast can the base crew repair the craters and clear the runways while under constant attacks?

The scenario I have in mind is China launching thousands of cheap drones with DF-17/21/100 and J-16/H-6K with glide bombs following them in the initial wave, then send tens to hundreds of cheap drones per hour to attack the runways afterward. J-16 and H-6K will focus on high value targets on the islands while J-20s go after combat aircrafts sent from Japanese main islands.
 
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Minm

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ZeEa5KPul said:
Let's look at the cost-to-weight of explosives ratio. A Shahed 136 is said to cost as low as $10,000 and the highest figure I've seen for payload is 50kg. That's $200 per kilo of explosive at the very least. The smallest American JDAM has a weight of 250 kg and a cost of $25,000; that's $100 per kilo. It falls to $25 if it's a one ton bomb. Even under the most generous assumptions for the drone and the most miserly for the JDAM, it's still twice the cost.

Add to this that a sortie by a single strike fighter can drop far more weight on target than a drone swarm. Drone swarms are useless against hardened targets, so that's an entire class of targets that can't even be attacked. The only reason Russia is using these drones is because they have no better alternatives. To this day they haven't managed to establish air superiority over Ukraine, need I say more?
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Add the cost of a fighter jet sortie and the risk of getting shot down.

Because drones are expendable they'll be used in the initial attacks only
 
Blitzo

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vincent said:
Every AIM-120, Patriot, manpads, etc that are spent on cheap drones is one less available to take down PLA's J-16, DF-100, KD-series, etc. The value exchange will be hugely in China's favour.

The drones can be equipped with cheap cellphone optics and some image recognition algorithm for enemy planes (on the ground) and land systems. If the drones discovered said targets on their pre-determined destinations, they can attack those targets instead.

50kg of explosives may only create a relatively small crater on runways, but if there are tens of them exploding along the runway, with the rubbles generated by the explosions, how fast can the base crew repair the craters and clear the runways while under constant attacks?

The scenario I have in mind is China launching thousands of cheap drones with DF-17/21/100 and J-16/H-6K with glide bombs following them in the initial wave, then send tens to hundreds of cheap drones per hour to attack the runways afterward. J-16 and H-6K will focus on high value targets on the islands while J-20s go after combat aircrafts sent from Japanese main islands.
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The defense against suicide drones like this would be done by high end SHORADS designed specifically to be more cost effective than traditional air defense systems.

Yes, it is possible that these suicide drones may still be cost effective, but their success is dependent upon high end capabilities successfully prosecuting their mission first.


The PLA has had such systems in service for multiple decades, there really is not a reason for people to get too excited over these capabilities as if it is something ground breaking and game changing.
There is a reason why the PLA has focused its procurement of various strike systems in the way it has.
 
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