Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

FriedRiceNSpice said:

By the time Taiwan's declaration is made public, the Taiwanese leadership would be deep underground in a bunker in the mountains.

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That is a bet am willing to take since there's an inherent acknowledgment that there are enough spies within and without the civilian-military-business sectors in Taiwan that such a potential move must and should be anticipated by the PLA planners. And if you and I average Joe's can think of such scenarios then I don't see why can't the PLA planners do the same, whose jobs after all is to think of every possible contingencies for decades. It's even possible to interdict the possible route of the civilian leadership by executing a missile strike if capturing them alive is less than possible to ensure that they're not going to have the Zalensky effect.

Also, the moment the civilian leadership announces the illegal declaration of independence, China should not even entertain any diplomatic overtures from any country, especially from the U.S. because that would just be a possible delaying tactics to evacuate and prepare the Taiwanese renegade leaders for safety. The PLA should immediately, and decisively attack key infrastructures such as communication, electricity, internet, create a total black out in the island in conjunction with the decapitation strike, in tandem with special forces strike to ensure the capture of the strategic targets.

But in order for the PLA to execute and achieve the operation objective of capturing/decapitation the political leadership, the PLA has to make some kind of feignt maneuver or targets to divert the attention of the civilian and military leadership in Taiwan. I feel that if the initial Russian special operations in Ukraine was executed in such a way where a total blackout and diversionary tactics/attacks were made, then there is a remote possibility that the paratroopers, special forces tasked to wrestle the Kyiv government could have been achieved.

Instead, the line of communication was allowed to remain open which made the operational security of the Russian forces along with their movements that much difficult to conceal. Everyone in Ukraine was essentially going on social media broadcasting the Russian forces movements to the world. And since the Americans were already providing ISR to the Ukrainina forces that simply made the lives of the Russian forces extra difficult and deadly. Fighting with one tied behind your back both literally and figuratively was a head scratcher in my opinion.

The PLA can't and must not afford to make the same namby pamby approach to their potential operations in Taiwan. And I hope to all the gods that war doesn't happen.

How is China doing on the targetting pod side of things. That is also a key weakness of the Russians.

Have not checked this thread in a while, so excuse me if anything has already been discussed
The Russian air force seems to still be getting hit by SAMS on a regular basis.

Russians seem to have thought early on that Ukr AD was eliminated, which is obviously not the case.
Is it possible that the still effective Ukr AD is because of the NATO ISR being passed on? SAM system Radar only illuminating when threat is imminent?

Is there a Y-8-JSTARS like aircraft?

I saw it was mentioned before that Russian Tor cannot fully fire on the move, but I think there were videos posted here of HQ-17 firing on the move, so this shortcoming would not affect the PLA? Also, would the modified ESA radar be better at picking up small TB-2 class drones?

Finally, if most of these shootdowns are indeed by Buk, I can see why PLAN is in no rush to supplement it with the "5-5-5".

I really hope PLAAF/PLAN SEAD is better than Russia's (in theory should be, since there is no Russian equivalent to J-16D)

I think the number of shoot downs is a combination of both really good Soviet era mobile SAMS, and really bad Russian SEAD/DEAD.

The SEAD/DEAD mission is also undoubtedly massively complicated by Russia’s break-neck advances, where their forces are advancing very rapidly without properly clearing territory before pressing ahead.

This has resulted in significant remanent Ukrainian forces being left behind the lines, which I think is a major cause of a lot of the ambushes of both land and air assets.

The Russians leaving a lot of broken down equipment essentially intact is also massively problematic since a lot of the equipment abandoned are AD units.

The Ukrainians started off simply blowing them up for cheap propaganda points, but lately seem to be much more interested in salvaging them.

I would not be surprised at all if some of the recent influx of shootdowns were done by Russia’s own systems that were abandoned and subsequently reactivated by the Ukrainians.

Even with the best fighters in existence you are going to struggle if your planes are getting shot at where they think they are safe and by supposedly friendly AD assets.

I think the biggest takeaway for China is that it should press forwards quickly but be thorough.

Any equipment that needs to be abandoned needs to be mission killed at least. Kill switches should be designed into weapons, and failing that, all crews should be trained on how to placed grenades to ensure mission kill of their vehicles.

In many ways, I think China has it easier in terms of SEAD and DEAD especially. While American patriots are no lemons, they are nowhere near as mobile as Russian S300s. Moreover, the AD systems Taiwan operates should be sufficiently different from the PLA’s own and imported Russian equipment that it would be really easy to distinguish them apart so PLAAF aircraft can engage targets much more freely without worrying about friendly fire.

FriedRiceNSpice said:

By the time Taiwan's declaration is made public, the Taiwanese leadership would be deep underground in a bunker in the mountains.

Click to expand...

About 2-3 years ago, Taiwan had a massive exercise/drill for the government and the military in the event of war with China. The news coverage showed the President smiling and waving at the watching crowd while she was been chauffeured to a military helicopter which then took her to a waiting American Destroyer out at sea.

So, while the military generals would be in underground bunkers, the top political leadership would have already evacuated to their planned American destinations safe and sound.

Bellum_Romanum said:

That is a bet am willing to take since there's an inherent acknowledgment that there are enough spies within and without the civilian-military-business sectors in Taiwan that such a potential move must and should be anticipated by the PLA planners. And if you and I average Joe's can think of such scenarios then I don't see why can't the PLA planners do the same, whose jobs after all is to think of every possible contingencies for decades. It's even possible to interdict the possible route of the civilian leadership by executing a missile strike if capturing them alive is less than possible to ensure that they're not going to have the Zalensky effect.

Also, the moment the civilian leadership announces the illegal declaration of independence, China should not even entertain any diplomatic overtures from any country, especially from the U.S. because that would just be a possible delaying tactics to evacuate and prepare the Taiwanese renegade leaders for safety. The PLA should immediately, and decisively attack key infrastructures such as communication, electricity, internet, create a total black out in the island in conjunction with the decapitation strike, in tandem with special forces strike to ensure the capture of the strategic targets.

But in order for the PLA to execute and achieve the operation objective of capturing/decapitation the political leadership, the PLA has to make some kind of feignt maneuver or targets to divert the attention of the civilian and military leadership in Taiwan. I feel that if the initial Russian special operations in Ukraine was executed in such a way where a total blackout and diversionary tactics/attacks were made, then there is a remote possibility that the paratroopers, special forces tasked to wrestle the Kyiv government could have been achieved.

Instead, the line of communication was allowed to remain open which made the operational security of the Russian forces along with their movements that much difficult to conceal. Everyone in Ukraine was essentially going on social media broadcasting the Russian forces movements to the world. And since the Americans were already providing ISR to the Ukrainina forces that simply made the lives of the Russian forces extra difficult and deadly. Fighting with one tied behind your back both literally and figuratively was a head scratcher in my opinion.

The PLA can't and must not afford to make the same namby pamby approach to their potential operations in Taiwan. And I hope to all the gods that war doesn't happen.

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Don't think the Russians could've accomplished this. Don't forget that the Russian military build up was in part triggered by the Ukrainian build up. Where are you going to sneak in so many helicopters?

The closest, most daring such attempt must be the KPA raid on the ROK Presidential Blue house. That was pure "Olympus has Fallen" stuff. Ultimately it failed.

I don't think such a declaration will come any time soon.
If a Taiwanese government is confident enough to pull such a stunt, it would have to have supreme control over the military. At the moment there is still a lot of corrupted officers even up to the General rank, so there is not enough guarantee of loyalty to the cause. If there is any disunity at all, a successful defense is highly unlikely. You might argue that the US might back them up, but that would only serve as an impetus for the declaration, but not prevent the possible broken ranks.

A lot of the abandoned Russian equipment can be attributed to poorly trained and motivated conscripts. I take the position that conscripts have no place on the modern battlefield - the mass abandonment of Russian assets shows they're worse than useless, they're a liability. I heard it said that although the PLA still technically has conscription, enough people volunteer for it to be a de facto volunteer army. Is this true? If so, what are the arguments against formally ending conscription in the PLA aside from the ideological canard that it's a "people's" army?

Bellum_Romanum said:

That is a bet am willing to take since there's an inherent acknowledgment that there are enough spies within and without the civilian-military-business sectors in Taiwan that such a potential move must and should be anticipated by the PLA planners. And if you and I average Joe's can think of such scenarios then I don't see why can't the PLA planners do the same, whose jobs after all is to think of every possible contingencies for decades. It's even possible to interdict the possible route of the civilian leadership by executing a missile strike if capturing them alive is less than possible to ensure that they're not going to have the Zalensky effect.

Also, the moment the civilian leadership announces the illegal declaration of independence, China should not even entertain any diplomatic overtures from any country, especially from the U.S. because that would just be a possible delaying tactics to evacuate and prepare the Taiwanese renegade leaders for safety. The PLA should immediately, and decisively attack key infrastructures such as communication, electricity, internet, create a total black out in the island in conjunction with the decapitation strike, in tandem with special forces strike to ensure the capture of the strategic targets.

But in order for the PLA to execute and achieve the operation objective of capturing/decapitation the political leadership, the PLA has to make some kind of feignt maneuver or targets to divert the attention of the civilian and military leadership in Taiwan. I feel that if the initial Russian special operations in Ukraine was executed in such a way where a total blackout and diversionary tactics/attacks were made, then there is a remote possibility that the paratroopers, special forces tasked to wrestle the Kyiv government could have been achieved.

Instead, the line of communication was allowed to remain open which made the operational security of the Russian forces along with their movements that much difficult to conceal. Everyone in Ukraine was essentially going on social media broadcasting the Russian forces movements to the world. And since the Americans were already providing ISR to the Ukrainina forces that simply made the lives of the Russian forces extra difficult and deadly. Fighting with one tied behind your back both literally and figuratively was a head scratcher in my opinion.

The PLA can't and must not afford to make the same namby pamby approach to their potential operations in Taiwan. And I hope to all the gods that war doesn't happen.

Click to expand...

@plawolf speculated that one reason the Russians left the comms on was because they could not risk a covert insertion of "peacekeepers" who occupy key airports or bridges and refuse to leave. If NATO transports or helicopters were flying into Kiev and Kherson on day 1 covertly and then peacekeepers just showed up, like Russia did in Kosovo, Russian strategy would be paralyzed and they'd be limited to retaking Donetsk and Lugansk.

If everyone was awake and with cell phones out (as they would be on day 1 where cruise missile were flying) NATO couldn't do a covert low altitude insertion without being seen while high altitude insertions would be picked up on long range radar.

Also note how Russian forces timed the first missile launches to coincide with dawn so that everyone would have sufficient light to take photos of the sky but the sun wouldn't be so high that phone cameras get saturated. I don't think anything is an accident. This was thought through.

ZeEa5KPul said:

If so, what are the arguments against formally ending conscription in the PLA aside from the ideological canard that it's a "people's" army?

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Logistics and Support roles I suppose. At least that is what I saw in the English Western(?) Articles (can’t remember source) on the conscription reforms recently.

ZeEa5KPul said:

A lot of the abandoned Russian equipment can be attributed to poorly trained and motivated conscripts. I take the position that conscripts have no place on the modern battlefield - the mass abandonment of Russian assets shows they're worse than useless, they're a liability. I heard it said that although the PLA still technically has conscription, enough people volunteer for it to be a de facto volunteer army. Is this true? If so, what are the arguments against formally ending conscription in the PLA aside from the ideological canard that it's a "people's" army?

Click to expand...

Russian doctrine even during the Warsaw Pact days is to immediately abandon equipment that breaks down or runs out of fuel and the crew acts as mounted infantry in another vehicle in the convoy. Speed > vehicles. Not like they're short on vehicles, they have 8k T-72s in storage. If they win a maintenance vehicle picks them up later if they lose they weren't gonna get those tanks up and running in time anyways.

Not like the Ukrainians can actually use it when their fuel and ammo stocks are down to near 0. They have to take the risk of hauling the abandoned equipment, refuel it, rearm it and make sure it is actually usable.