Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

muddie said:

People talking about upping defense spending and expanding nuke arsenal, something China is already doing. But IMO the biggest lesson so far seems that China needs to abandon its current, outdated nuclear weapons policy. Committing to no first use in the current geopolitical environment is beyond foolish.

Russia's nuclear threats work because it has an aggressive nuclear weapons policy: Russia will use nukes against vast convention attacks. This simple stance basically prevented any idea of a NATO intervention.

If China doesn't commit to escalating to nukes if attacked conventionally, especially in a Taiwan scenario, it's basically inviting U.S. intervention if something goes wrong during an invasion.

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I don't think usa or Russia or anyone serious buys into chinas no first use policy. Military planners won't care about that and just ignore it like it doesn't exist. That's just to allow china the moral high ground and I think it's good for china, like usa trying to pressure china to sign non proliferation deal with Russia, china can just tell them to fuckoff. Same with Chinese nuke numbers, no one knows for sure. China has undergrounds tunnel network with thousands of km of tunnels. China could have 250 or even 1000, I doubt anyone knows for sure.

The day before china invades or attacks anything serious(like Taiwan), just get rid of no first use policy and declare china has 2000 nukes. I doubt anyone will attack china anyway even with 250 unstoppable nukes which can hit anywhere on earth in less than 30 mins.

Even without nukes Taiwan is china's backyard and china will dominate even if usa does come. Usa will not risk it's existence over Taiwan.

But I agree in general. China should up it's nuke count to 1000 at least asap.

Strangelove said:

Power outage again in Wanwanistan, they have to jerk off mostly in the dark...

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At least they have plentiful waifu pillows to look at in the dark

luosifen said:

Getting some budget hikes lately

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The budget is NOT hiking tho. If your economy growths at 8% but your defence budget is growing at 7%, then it's by definition decreasing or slowing down. This has been the case all the time for china in the last 15 years at least. CPC might regret their inaction on this trend the same way they regret in stopping the one-child policy way too late.

Tying back to the taiwan topic, you also shouldn't expect anything in the future if this trend keeps on continuing.

victoon said:

I see a lot of discussion on learning from what the Russians have been doing. But there is a lot to learn from the Ukrainians as well. For example, portable ATGM/AAGM proved to be very effective. Given the difficulties of sending large quantities of armors, ATGM/AAGM can help the PLA paratroopers.

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Actually ATGMs were way less effective than I expected them to be. Because the Russians simply did not allow the Ukrainians the luxury of training with those weapons properly before they went in. And the Russians hit the stockpiles where most of them were located early on. The AAGM threat was hardly new to the Russians since the Soviets faced it in Afghanistan and these missiles are pretty much of similar vintage. The Soviet design, upgraded, systems like the Mi-24 and Ka-52 did ok against it, albeit with some losses. I have not seen a shoot down of a post Soviet helo system designed from inception to be hardened against such AAGMs like the Mi-28 yet.

I think NLAW had the potential to be a lot more damaging than the Javelin because it is more portable and supposedly easier to use. The Swedes basically designed them specifically for engaging Soviet/Russian tanks while Javelin seems to be a jack of all trades kind of thing. But with regards to Russian armor losses most of them seem to be from mechanical breakdown. Not AT fire.

The situation in Taiwan would not be directly applicable but I think this shows that China would do well to invest in a heavy attack helicopter with hardened protection against AAGMs and small caliber guns. While drones are nice to have you neither have the situational awareness nor the same reaction time with a drone. Only way a drone would work at flushing out the AAGM operators and disabling them would be if it had some kind of AI in it that would shorten the reaction time. But this comes with all sorts of ethical concerns.

China should seriously consider waiting until global war before retaking Taiwan (i.e., US quagmire in Europe and Iran, Koreas duking it out)

Atleast we can minimize attention during the bloody invasion and the world can all rebuild our societies at the same time from rubbles.

That is what I learned from Ukraine...too much attention results in a high sanction response and high civilian casualties is basically a given if you want dominance and relatively fast results. Best for China to diffuse attention while world is distracted at multiple places before dropping the hammer.

Phead128 said:

China should seriously consider waiting until global war before retaking Taiwan (i.e., US quagmire in Europe and Iran, Koreas duking it out)

Atleast we can minimize attention during the bloody invasion and the world can all rebuild our societies at the same time from rubbles.

That is what I learned from Ukraine...too much attention results in a high sanction response and high civilian casualties is basically a given if you want dominance and relatively fast results. Best for China to diffuse attention while world is distracted at multiple places before dropping the hammer.

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This is true to some extent, if one looks at past history. PLA starts major offensives when there are other things going on in the world.

Liberation War - the Three Major Campaigns coincides with the Berlin Blockade of 1948 - 1949.

Sino-Indian War - coincides with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Sino-Vietnam War - coincides with the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Also precedes the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and China by a couple of months.

Jason_ said:

4 armor brigades and 3 mechanized infantry brigades. Armor has 5 tank companies, mech inf has 4. Each company has 14 tanks.

So (4*5+3*4)*14=448

Supposedly many units are not fully fitted out so the actually number may be less.

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You may be interested in the below article.


Some choice quotes:

"Even worse, the 269th Mechanized Infantry Brigade isn’t some rear-echelon unit but a major combat formation strategically stationed around the outskirt of Taoyuan City, northern Taiwan. It is expected to bear the brunt of ground fighting to stop any invading Chinese troops from reaching the basin of Taipei, Taiwan’s capital. If the 269th is in such bad material shape, how about the rest of the Taiwanese military?


Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) does not officially disclose how many “major combat platforms” are in a mission-capable state. During computer-simulated exercises such as the annual war game, however, the military simply assumed its units would have 90 percent fighting strength in terms of personnel and at least 85 percent equipment as mission-capable.


“Those numbers are worthless. They have no basis in reality,” James Huang, a retired army lieutenant colonel who has become a prolific and a vocal critic of Taiwan’s defense ministry, told Foreign Policy. “The army likely has no clue how many tanks or guns are actually mission-capable even if they wanted to tell the truth. Because it is common for soldiers even from the lowest ranks to make up numbers so officers can present a rosy picture to please the top brass and politicians.”

Of course, this presents more of an opportunity for the US MIC to wring more money from their client/vassal state.

lcloo said:

460 M-60A3 TTF MBT
450 CM-11 (Taiwan assembled M-60 chasis with M-48 turret) MBT
100 CM-12 (M-48A) tank
100 M-41 Light tank
400+ CM-42 8 wheel IFV/APC/Light tank etc
1,000+ CM-21 (variants of M-113 IFV/APC)
300 V-150 wheel armored vehicle
7,000+ Humvee
60 M-110A2 203mm SPA
260+ M-109A2/A5/6 155mm SPA.

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Abrams haven't reached them yet?

Crang said:

At least they have plentiful waifu pillows to look at in the dark

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With what, night vision goggles?

lych470 said:

This is true to some extent, if one looks at past history. PLA starts major offensives when there are other things going on in the world.

Liberation War - the Three Major Campaigns coincides with the Berlin Blockade of 1948 - 1949.

Sino-Indian War - coincides with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Sino-Vietnam War - coincides with the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Also precedes the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and China by a couple of months.

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Actually it was the opposite.

1) In 1947, KMT initiated attacks on PLA in North East China, they has advantges in manpower and US supplied equipment. PLA was reacting to attacks of KMT rather than starting the war. Berlin wall blokade was after the commenced of Chinese civil war.

2) Sino- Indian war was again a reaction by PLA against the forward policy of India in South Tibet. Indian arrogance caused the war. China did not attack because of them choosing a time to coincide with Cuban missile crisis.

3) Again the Sino-Vietnam war was fought because of Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia. When the war started on 17th February 1979, the Iranian revolution (7th January 1978 to 11 February 1979) had already ended.