Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

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BoraTas

BoraTas

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Jingle Bells said:
Mainland's military power superiority over Taiwan is much greater than Russia's military superiority over Ukraine, considering the type of war they will be fighting. Russia has a lack of material military resources as well as manpower, against Ukraine which is the largest country in Europe, other than Russia.

1. Ukraine is about 17 times the size of Taiwan. Taiwan is about 0.36% the size of Mainland, Ukraine is about 3.5% of Russia.
2. Ukraine's population is nearly 30% that of Russia. Taiwan is about 1.6% of Mainland Population.
3. Ukraine GDP is about 10% that of Russia GDP. Taiwan is about only 3.7% of mainland GDP.

In an air war, China and Russia will both gain air superiority, because their air forces are both much stronger than the opponent. However, the amount of PGM's and missiles in China's arsenal is MUCH MUCH larger than Russia as a result of China's much larger budget. But in terms of their opponents, Taiwan's size is much much smaller than Ukraine, which means that even with same intensity, the PLA will be able to drop at least 1 to 2 orders of magnitude more munitions on Taiwan per unit area, and with a much larger percentage of these will be PGMs compare to Russia.

This is not even counting in the fact that with J-16D and a whole lot of other specialized electromagnetic warfare equipment the PLA put into active service, PLA will be a lot more effective in suppressing and destroying air defense capabilities on Taiwan than Russia could do in Ukraine. Of all the aspects in which the Ukrainian was able to resist Russians to a certain degree, pretty much all of these are weaknesses that Russia has but China does not.
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The greatest difference here is China's UAVs. Russia has little to no proper drones. China has on the other hand has hundreds of MALE/HALE drones. Just look at how fast the GJ-2s were delivered to importing countries despite their multi-dozen order sizes. These drones have 30+ hour endurance and fly higher than the ceilings of MANPADS. There will be losses. But China will not be doing dumb bomb and rocket runs at low altitude in contested air space. I am baffled by Russia's decision to do so. Probably because of economic reasons.

Javelins are a real threat. Eliminating them by purely air campaign is unrealistic. MAWS, DIRCM and APS will be a must. Smoke laying capabilities by the artillery and aircraft are also needs to be improved.
 
J

Jingle Bells

Junior Member
Registered Member
tch1972 said:
China needs to urgently improve and install active protection systems on their tanks and APC.

The current known system GL-5 in China only have a 360 x 20 degree coverage. Pretty useless against top down attack like Javelin and urban war setting.


Areas to improve are to

1.extend the coverage to all round coverage.
2. Deal with kenetic rounds.
3. Possibly install it on amphibious landing vehicles which I think will be challenging and never been done before.
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I am pretty sure that by the time PLA land/marine forces goes in, Taiwan would have been obliterated already. Trust me, Taiwanese is NOTHING like Ukrainians, they have literally NEVER saw a hard war, or even hardships. Taiwanese say these themselves, they've been saying that they are so lucky ever since Japanese colonization, because they've pretty evaded all large scale war on the island.

Chinese mainland was badly charred by decades of war.
Japanese main islands were pretty much razed to the ground by USAF
Korean peninsula was punished even more badly than Japanese main island.
Vietnam was literally razed to the ground during Vietnam war.

Taiwan island was pretty much spared all of these, they don't have one tenth of the toughness of Slavs. They will be cut like butter.
 
J

Jingle Bells

Junior Member
Registered Member
BoraTas said:
The greatest difference here is China's UAVs. Russia has little to no proper drones. China has on the other hand has hundreds of MALE/HALE drones. Just look at how fast the GJ-2s were delivered to importing countries despite their multi-dozen order sizes. These drones have 30+ hour endurance and fly higher than the ceilings of MANPADS. There will be losses. But China will not be doing dumb bomb and rocket runs at low altitude in contested air space. I am baffled by Russia's decision to do so. Probably because of economic reasons.

Javelins are a real threat. Eliminating them by purely air campaign is unrealistic. MAWS, DIRCM and APS will be a must. Smoke laying capabilities by the artillery and aircraft are also needs to be improved.
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Javelin can't do much in this situation. By the time the PLA land force goes in, it will be a fully informationized. They will be armed to the teeth with smalls drones and other recon/surveillance equipment. And the PLA has vastly larger quantitative advantage. Taiwan is too small, they don't have the space to do hit and run. They don't have the strategic depth to hide. The only thing they can hold hostage is the people on the island. But trust me, after this current conflict, the PLA will be much much less benevolent.

And that's not counting UCGV's
 
S

supersnoop

Major
Registered Member
Jingle Bells said:
Javelin can't do much in this situation. By the time the PLA land force goes in, it will be a fully informationized. They will be armed to the teeth with smalls drones and other recon/surveillance equipment. And the PLA has vastly larger quantitative advantage. Taiwan is too small, they don't have the space to do hit and run. They don't have the strategic depth to hide. The only thing they can hold hostage is the people on the island. But trust me, after this current conflict, the PLA will be much much less benevolent.

And that's not counting UCGV's
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I think Javelin is quite useful for this case, and the Ukrainians are using them as I would expect ROCA to use them. The only issue is that Javelin is of limited use after basically day 1.

If they are unable to repel the amphibious assault upon landing and any cities are captured, you aren’t going to see the same kind of armoured formations.

1. Taiwan is an island
2. Taiwan is full of mountains

For the same reason M1 isn’t so great for ROCA, PLA heavy tanks aren’t great in this scenario.

Just to add because I just saw something after posting this. There is a real danger for Taiwan to put so much stock into this conflict. They are already talking about more Javelins and more stingers, well they already have a lot of both… DPP trying to sell them as wunderwaffen
 
Sardaukar20

Sardaukar20

Captain
Registered Member
Jingle Bells said:
I am pretty sure that by the time PLA land/marine forces goes in, Taiwan would have been obliterated already. Trust me, Taiwanese is NOTHING like Ukrainians, they have literally NEVER saw a hard war, or even hardships. Taiwanese say these themselves, they've been saying that they are so lucky ever since Japanese colonization, because they've pretty evaded all large scale war on the island.

Chinese mainland was badly charred by decades of war.
Japanese main islands were pretty much razed to the ground by USAF
Korean peninsula was punished even more badly than Japanese main island.
Vietnam was literally razed to the ground during Vietnam war.

Taiwan island was pretty much spared all of these, they don't have one tenth of the toughness of Slavs. They will be cut like butter.
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Good point. I don't see the Taiwanese putting up the same amount of fight as the Ukrainians. They have not had to endure actual hardship for quite a long time.

Nevertheless, I still think the PLA should treat Taiwanese combatants with some respect. At best, they could be as cowardly as those HK cockroaches. At worse, they can be as determined and bloodthirsty as those Ukrainian Azov fighters. A Javelin in the hands of a cowardly soldier could still kill a squad of enemies sitting in an APC. So the PLA must train with that in mind.

I would prefer China to learn some of the good examples in the Nagorno-Karabakh war of 2020. Extensively use unmanned systems to dismantle the enemy. After the initial large scale strikes to degrade the ROCAF and C&C. China should fill the Taiwanese skies with UCAVs and loitering munitions 24/7. Lure out the remaining Taiwanese heavy Air defence with target drones. Then use radar-homing loitering munitions to take them out. Then have Chinese UCAVs pick out Taiwanese military assets and combatants one by one. There will be drones shot down, but losing men vs drones will be quite demoralising. This has to go on for as long as needed to fully demoralise the Taiwanese resistance.

Hopefully, with a combination of successful information blackout, and large-scale loss of military capabilities. China could force a Taiwanese surrender soon.
 
FairAndUnbiased

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier
Registered Member
Sardaukar20 said:
Good point. I don't see the Taiwanese putting up the same amount of fight as the Ukrainians. They have not had to endure actual hardship for quite a long time.

Nevertheless, I still think the PLA should treat Taiwanese combatants with some respect. At best, they could be as cowardly as those HK cockroaches. At worse, they can be as determined and bloodthirsty as those Ukrainian Azov fighters. A Javelin in the hands of a cowardly soldier could still kill a squad of enemies sitting in an APC. So the PLA must train with that in mind.

I would prefer China to learn some of the good examples in the Nagorno-Karabakh war of 2020. Extensively use unmanned systems to dismantle the enemy. After the initial large scale strikes to degrade the ROCAF and C&C. China should fill the Taiwanese skies with UCAVs and loitering munitions 24/7. Lure out the remaining Taiwanese heavy Air defence with target drones. Then use radar-homing loitering munitions to take them out. Then have Chinese UCAVs pick out Taiwanese military assets and combatants one by one. There will be drones shot down, but losing men vs drones will be quite demoralising. This has to go on for as long as needed to fully demoralise the Taiwanese resistance.

Hopefully, with a combination of successful information blackout, and large-scale loss of military capabilities. China could force a Taiwanese surrender soon.
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True. Russia is releasing some recent drone footage such as designating enemies with lasers for an artillery strike and scouting for ATGM teams on roofs.

Every time I see the scout drones, I think - if those were even armed with a 7.62 mm, they wouldn't just scout for ATGM teams, they'd be hunting them.
 
P

pmc

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arming drone increase the size of drone and potentially decrease speed. it eliminate the surprise factor when considering Nato
does PLA has rugged platform like Su-25 or Ka-52 that is carrying external fuel and based very near to battlefield.
Syria experience led to this development. increasing the speed.
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FairAndUnbiased

FairAndUnbiased

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pmc said:
arming drone increase the size of drone and potentially decrease speed. it eliminate the surprise factor when considering Nato
does PLA has rugged platform like Su-25 or Ka-52 that is carrying external fuel and based very near to battlefield.
Syria experience led to this development. increasing the speed.
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PLAAF has JH-7A. Compared to Su-25:

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JH-7A:
  • Crew: 2
  • Length: 22.32 m (73 ft 3 in)
  • Wingspan: 12.8 m (42 ft 0 in)
  • Height: 6.22 m (20 ft 5 in)
  • Wing area: 42.2 m2 (454 sq ft)
  • Empty weight: 14,500 kg (31,967 lb)
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  • Max takeoff weight: 28,475 kg (62,777 lb)
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  • Powerplant: 2 ×
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    engines, 54.29 kN (12,200 lbf) thrust each dry, 91.26 kN (20,520 lbf) with afterburner
Su-25:
  • Crew: 1
  • Length: 15.53 m (50 ft 11 in) (including nose probe)
  • Wingspan: 14.36 m (47 ft 1 in)
  • Height: 4.8 m (15 ft 9 in)
  • Wing area: 33.7 m2 (363 sq ft)
  • Empty weight: 9,800 kg (21,605 lb)
  • Gross weight: 14,440 kg (31,835 lb)
  • Max takeoff weight: 19,300 kg (42,549 lb)
  • Powerplant: 2 ×
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    engine, 44.18 kN (9,930 lbf) thrust each
Looks to me like JH-7A has a 14000 kg payload while Su-25 has 10000 kg payload and higher thrust in exchange for having a 2nd weapons officer on board.
 
H

Han Patriot

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KYli said:
China should wait but the US might not let China wait.

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I think Taiwan should be more worried that nobody came to defend Ukraine. Taiwan might be facing the same fate. Of course they could reassure themselves that Russia did not advance fats enough, but heck Russia did not even go total war. For Taiwan, I think China must go total war, destruction of Taiwan or surrender.
 
Sardaukar20

Sardaukar20

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FairAndUnbiased said:
PLAAF has JH-7A. Compared to Su-25:

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JH-7A:
  • Crew: 2
  • Length: 22.32 m (73 ft 3 in)
  • Wingspan: 12.8 m (42 ft 0 in)
  • Height: 6.22 m (20 ft 5 in)
  • Wing area: 42.2 m2 (454 sq ft)
  • Empty weight: 14,500 kg (31,967 lb)
    Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
  • Max takeoff weight: 28,475 kg (62,777 lb)
    Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
  • Powerplant: 2 ×
    Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
    Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
    engines, 54.29 kN (12,200 lbf) thrust each dry, 91.26 kN (20,520 lbf) with afterburner
Su-25:
  • Crew: 1
  • Length: 15.53 m (50 ft 11 in) (including nose probe)
  • Wingspan: 14.36 m (47 ft 1 in)
  • Height: 4.8 m (15 ft 9 in)
  • Wing area: 33.7 m2 (363 sq ft)
  • Empty weight: 9,800 kg (21,605 lb)
  • Gross weight: 14,440 kg (31,835 lb)
  • Max takeoff weight: 19,300 kg (42,549 lb)
  • Powerplant: 2 ×
    Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
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    engine, 44.18 kN (9,930 lbf) thrust each
Looks to me like JH-7A has a 14000 kg payload while Su-25 has 10000 kg payload and higher thrust in exchange for having a 2nd weapons officer on board.
Click to expand...
True. But the JH-7A is not as well armoured as the Su-25s to engage in Close Air Support. To me, the JH-7A is a rough equivalent to the modernized Russian Su-24. Its a fighter bomber, designed to drop munitions from higher altitudes. It still can do CAS, but it's not optimized for that. So both the JH-7A and Su-25 are indeed ground-attack aircraft, but they do it differently.

Why China is not fielding or even producing dedicated heavily armoured, slow-moving, fixed wing 'flying tank' CAS aircrafts like the Su-25 or A-10. I'm not entirely sure why. Nevertheless, UCAVs have taken on some of the CAS role on the modern battlefield. So China might be considering using UCAVs instead of traditional 'flying tanks'.
 
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