Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

FairAndUnbiased said:

Mobile communications is only wireless for end user. Otherwise the data is carried on fiber optics. Wireless doesn't have the bandwidth or channels to support the massive volume of data that millions of smartphones produce.

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I didn't look into it too much, maybe it was an overblown story. They did not say how they provided the backhaul. Is it possible to provide satellite uplink or point to point service at the cost of latency? Not my area of expertise...

What I don't understand in general is the lack of EW assets being deployed.
Obviously Russia doesn't have anything like J-16D or EF-18, but it should have something? Especially if they suspect things like Global Hawk and JSTARS is providing info. All Buk SAMS should have been suppressed long ago (perhaps the advanced recon from western surveillance is allowing them to be more disciplined with radar?)

This is something 100% the PLA would not do. They are already doing this with the flybys Y-8 ELINT/EW/MPA and combat aircraft flying together.

The interesting question is how to suppress SHORADS as well. A number of helos were brought down by Strela. This would be equivalent to the ROCA Avengers
We have seen WZ-19 (mmW equipped) work together with WZ-10 to pass targeting data. Would this be enough to stay at a safe range? Does current gen FLIR have enough range to pickup humans who might be hiding with Stingers?

Bltizo said:

one of the takeaways is that conducting airborne drops and even helicopter air assaults against a semblance of a conventional military is very high risk.

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It's should be considered unnecessary, unless geography enforces it.

Bltizo said:

And in general war optimism and hand waving away certain complex operations as if they are going to be guaranteed successes, is very very dangerous.

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Yea but that's always been true. It's just regular complacency.

supersnoop said:

What I don't understand in general is the lack of EW assets being deployed.

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See, this is exactly why this discussion is too early.

We simply do not know the quantities of EW/ECM/ELINT assets that Russia deployed yet.

This level of analysis requires data, and we simply do not have it yet.

Details like this usually aren't revealed on open sources until well after a conflict is over.

Vatt’ghern said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1498119654908309505

Karlin has some good points; since it's apparnet that the US will- via its allies in korea and japan and australia- try to make any chinese op in taiwan difficult, why shouldn't the PLA turn any taiwan reunification op into a war to expel the US from east Asia much as Putin's stated demands were for NATO to exit eastern europe and pull back to pre 1990s borders?

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That would be a diplomatic and military disaster, overreach that mimics Imperial Japan's mistakes. I floated in a different thread that in the case of US and Japan intervention it may become necessary for PRC to liberate the Ryukyus, which would include neutralizing hostile military capabilities there, but that should be the extent of PRC's scope of choice. Of course this does include taking over all ROC holdings in the SCS and near Taiwan proper in addition to Taiwan itself.

supersnoop said:

I didn't look into it too much, maybe it was an overblown story. They did not say how they provided the backhaul. Is it possible to provide satellite uplink or point to point service at the cost of latency? Not my area of expertise...

What I don't understand in general is the lack of EW assets being deployed.
Obviously Russia doesn't have anything like J-16D or EF-18, but it should have something? Especially if they suspect things like Global Hawk and JSTARS is providing info. All Buk SAMS should have been suppressed long ago (perhaps the advanced recon from western surveillance is allowing them to be more disciplined with radar?)

This is something 100% the PLA would not do. They are already doing this with the flybys Y-8 ELINT/EW/MPA and combat aircraft flying together.

The interesting question is how to suppress SHORADS as well. A number of helos were brought down by Strela. This would be equivalent to the ROCA Avengers
We have seen WZ-19 (mmW equipped) work together with WZ-10 to pass targeting data. Would this be enough to stay at a safe range? Does current gen FLIR have enough range to pickup humans who might be hiding with Stingers?

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A single 4G data connection is ~14 MB per second.

A satellite connection is maybe a few MB per second to GEO and a few tens of MB to LEO.

Point to point microwave is up to 10 GB per second with 2 large fixed installations in the open at high elevation (lol). This is backhaul microwave transmission, not end user, so it has to be able to transmit for huge numbers of users too.

A fiber line is 100+ TB per second.

There's no comparison.

The biggest thing that I learned is that you need to cut off internet/communication access between Taiwan and rest of the world. The West will demonize you no matter what, so cut off internet access, a complete information block-out, the less information, the better. Let them use their imagination to smear you, they have no shortage of imagination (e.g., genocide), they are going to do that no matter what.

China will not win the "narrative" battle among Western media audiences, but it can reduce the information coming out of Taiwan to nearly zero.

Phead128 said:

The biggest thing that I learned is that you need to cut off internet/communication access between Taiwan and rest of the world. The West will demonize you no matter what, so cut off internet access, a complete information block-out, the less information, the better. Let them use their imagination to smear you, they have no shortage of imagination (e.g., genocide), they are going to do that no matter what.

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will have to account of future starlink shenanigans. maybe leverage the tesla plant.

Just want to emphasize that though not strictly military, whatever people want to call it these days, soft power, hearts and minds, psyops, are crucially important before, during, and after any hot conflict. In terms of espionage and special forces an urgent key goal must be decapitation, physically neutralize, not just obvious political and military targets but important PR targets as well.

I think the biggest mistake China needs to fix is to be cheap. Yes, we all laugh about Chinese fighters using rocket pods to strafe targets during excercises, but seeing how the RuAF in Ukraine is now exactly doing that, endangering their few aviation assets with dumb bombs and rocket runs, this is no laughing matter anymore.

China needs to acquire tens of thousand guided weapons for their aviation forces and train with them regularily in excercises to become proficient with them. We are already seeing some more footages of Chinese PGMs during training, but we are still seeing too many rocket runs as well. China will be ready for Taiwan when we have an entire year of PLA training footages without a single rocket pod run.

Bltizo said:

I'm writing up a post summarizing my own thoughts on the lessons of the Ukraine war so far, and one of the takeaways is that conducting airborne drops and even helicopter air assaults against a semblance of a conventional military is very high risk.
And in general war optimism and hand waving away certain complex operations as if they are going to be guaranteed successes, is very very dangerous.

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Unfortunately, people get too excited about getting nuclear bombs and magically air dropping 1 million troops in Taiwan and forget about all the logistics and training to get basic landing completed.

I think we can mostly agree that PLAAF will be able to take out all the fixed radar/SAM sites and ground ROCAF for the most part. Even with a lot of bombing, it would be hard to assume they can simply just do amphibious landings without massive amount of firepower coming back. As we've seen with the Russians, large transport are easy targets when you don't account for all the short range SAMs.

Basic things like making sure the Air Force joins helicopters and amphibious forces when they are landing sounds easy. But as we've seen with Russians, it's not that easy. Basic things like making sure your vehicles are supplied with enough fuel sounds easy, but it clearly isn't. These are all things PLA need to learn to do correctly

supersnoop said:

The interesting question is how to suppress SHORADS as well. A number of helos were brought down by Strela. This would be equivalent to the ROCA Avengers
We have seen WZ-19 (mmW equipped) work together with WZ-10 to pass targeting data. Would this be enough to stay at a safe range? Does current gen FLIR have enough range to pickup humans who might be hiding with Stingers?

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Exactly, this is the kind of discussions PLA will be having. How do you take out mobile short range air defense system. It's not that easy. The put your higher valued fighter jets in danger. Based on the performance that TB-2 is having against SHORAD, maybe the answer is UCAVs. PLA can learn from both Russia and Ukraine here.

Should they put MMW on WZ-10? With uprated WZ-9G engines, you can probably install MMW radar on selected WZ-10. Does WZ-19 have the range for Taiwan mission? Do they need to be more well protected? All questions that PLA brass needs to be having. Z-9W at this point probably should be removed from service.

Also, notice that not many Ka-52 and Mi-28Ns have been brought down. PLA maybe seeing the importance of heavy attack helicopters. The longer the attack helicopters last, the better chance they have in taking down these SHORADS.