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Relevant quote:

Australian military analyst Peter Layton of the Griffith Asia Institute said the F-16 sale could actually help stabilize the Taiwan situation, at least from a military standpoint.
"The sale will act to broadly maintain the air combat balance" between Taiwanese (ROCAF) and Chinese (PLAAF) air forces, Layton said.
"The PLAAF has significantly more air combat aircraft than the ROCAF, but in a conflict the ROCAF will be defending and the PLAAF attacking. The difference in roles and that the ROCAF will be operating over its own airfields compensates for the difference in numbers," he said.
"The additional F-16s will simply keep the balance into the early 2030s," Layton said.

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I want some honest assessment from PLA watchers. How delusional/realistic is this "expert"? I thought PLA has about 1400 4th Gen jets with many of them 4.5 gen such as J-10B, C and J-16, Su-35. Taiwan has about 100+ f-16 right now. If you ignore PLA's missiles and bombers and other multipliers, How much does this sale change the "balance"?

tamsen_ikard said:

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I want some honest assessment from PLA watchers. How delusional/realistic is this "expert"? I thought PLA has about 1400 4th Gen jets with many of them 4.5 gen such as J-10B, C and J-16, Su-35. Taiwan has about 100+ f-16 right now. How much does this sale change the "balance"?

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It doesn't. All of the ROC's airbases are gone in the first minutes of conflict. They want to use highways to put some scattered jets up but they're be flying around like headless flies with no command and no AWAC. The is the US fleecing the ROC for "protection money" without giving any protection.

tamsen_ikard said:

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I want some honest assessment from PLA watchers. How delusional/realistic is this "expert"? I thought PLA has about 1400 4th Gen jets with many of them 4.5 gen such as J-10B, C and J-16, Su-35. Taiwan has about 100+ f-16 right now. If you ignore PLA's missiles and bombers and other multipliers, How much does this sale change the "balance"?

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The biggest problem with Taiwan from a defense perspective is that the island is simply to small and too close to China. The number of fighter jets, especially a few dozen F-16s do not change anything from a military perspective. Sale of U.S. military equipment to Taiwan is more of symbolic rather than to actually deter any Chinese military action.

If you look at the map of Taiwan, all of their high valued targets (including key cities) are actually facing China rather than the Pacific. The size and proximity of Taiwan in modern warfare makes these F-16s sitting ducks. There is probably not even enough lead time for most of the F-16s to take off if conflict breaks out.

IMO Taiwan should have gone for independence in the 1970s / 1980s where a prolonged fight with the PLA and likelihood of U.S. intervention was more likely.

tamsen_ikard said:

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I want some honest assessment from PLA watchers. How delusional/realistic is this "expert"? I thought PLA has about 1400 4th Gen jets with many of them 4.5 gen such as J-10B, C and J-16, Su-35. Taiwan has about 100+ f-16 right now. If you ignore PLA's missiles and bombers and other multipliers, How much does this sale change the "balance"?

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The very fact that this guy draws his conclusion by only comparing air force to air force is enough to convince me that his thoughts are nothing but amateur garbage.

Taiwan is already greatly handicapped in its strategic stance: it can only defend, because the DPP and the seperatists has already made it politically incorrect to consider Taiwan a part of China. This is actually a double edged sword. It is bad for Taiwan because this means that politically speaking, the majority of Taiwanese do not really believe that the ROC has any legitimacy claiming the entirely of China under its sovereignty. This means that under Taiwanese democracy, no Taiwanese government can effectively mobilize its citizens to put up an offensive strategy/doctrine against the Mainland (aka. “反攻大陸”).

Under this circumstance, Taiwan gives up all the possibility to have any offensive capability (amphibious assault/invade the mainland). This greatly handicaps Taiwan, because it can not longer post a real threat against the PRC. This might sound far fetched right now, but in actuality it is only in the recently 2 decades did the PRC finally stopped feeling threatened by the ROC.

The PLA has capabilities in the Strategic Rocket Force, and the army and navy that Taiwan simply do not possess. Its air force not only dwarfs Taiwan by number, it also possesses information and electromagnetic spectrum warfare capabilities that vastly out-weights Taiwan. Just look at the number of different Gaoxin special warfare aircraft models and specialties. The number of submarines in the PLAN and their capabilities is enough to decimate Taiwan defense.

The biggest problem with Taiwanese forces and defense capability is that it is purely defensive. It does not posses any noteworthy offensive capabilities in both the military and the political arena.

manqiangrexue said:

A

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muddie said:

B

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jimmyjames30x30 said:

C

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I think we all agree that Taiwan has no chance of survival fighting alone due to various strategic conditions and PLA capabilities as a whole. But I am only interested in a Jet fighter fleet of PLA vs Taiwan comparison, without taking into account any involvement of missiles, bombers, AWACS and so on. Just how good is PLA's fleet of fighter jets in terms of numbers and quality, compared to Taiwan's F-16 and Fck Ching Kuo and Mirage 2000?



According to this, they have 115 F-16, 103 Fck-1, 46 Mirage 2000.

Just how good is an F-ck and mirage-2000 compared to the older J-10A and J-11A/B, SU-30MKK that PLA has? Is it equal chance of survival 1v1? Or 2 to 1 loss in favor one way or the other? Are these two fighters of Taiwan even considered 4th Gen?

All of Taiwan's F-16 are supposed to be converted to a modern F-16 standard. If you combine that with the new F-16v purchase, how good is 165 modern F-16 vs whatever number of J-10B,C and J-16 that PLA has?

muddie said:

The biggest problem with Taiwan from a defense perspective is that the island is simply to small and too close to China. The number of fighter jets, especially a few dozen F-16s do not change anything from a military perspective. Sale of U.S. military equipment to Taiwan is more of symbolic rather than to actually deter any Chinese military action.

If you look at the map of Taiwan, all of their high valued targets (including key cities) are actually facing China rather than the Pacific. The size and proximity of Taiwan in modern warfare makes these F-16s sitting ducks. There is probably not even enough lead time for most of the F-16s to take off if conflict breaks out.

IMO Taiwan should have gone for independence in the 1970s / 1980s where a prolonged fight with the PLA and likelihood of U.S. intervention was more likely.

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Actually, geography is not the real problem. The real problem is strategic vision. Taiwan is actually surprisingly potent as an challenger to mainland China. The Ming and Qing dynasty would NOT have been so eagerly determined to take complete control of Taiwan, if Taiwan is as harmless as, say Ryukyu. Taiwan could pose a great threat to Chinese mainland just by geography alone.

The only reason such threats had been overcome in the past by China actually has to do with the internal politics of Taiwan. Simply speaking, Taiwan needs to stay as an strategically offensive outpost (or a desolate, order-less, undeveloped jungle) in order not to be taken over by the mainland.

Therefore, had the Zheng family kept on being a aggressive offensive anti-Manchu/anti-Qing base for Ming loyalists. They would have held on as a de-facto independent kingdom for much longer. The same thing goes for the ROC.

tamsen_ikard said:

I think we all agree that Taiwan has no chance of survival fighting alone due to various strategic conditions and PLA capabilities as a whole. But I am only interested in a Jet fighter fleet of PLA vs Taiwan comparison, without taking into account any involvement of missiles, bombers, AWACS and so on. Just how good is PLA's fleet of fighter jets in terms of numbers and quality, compared to Taiwan's F-16 and Fck Ching Kuo and Mirage 2000?

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According to this, they have 115 F-16, 103 Fck-1, 46 Mirage 2000.

Just how good is an F-ck and mirage-2000 compared to the older J-10A and J-11A/B, SU-30MKK that PLA has? Is it equal chance of survival 1v1? Or 2 to 1 loss in favor one way or the other? Are these two fighters of Taiwan even considered 4th Gen?

All of Taiwan's F-16 are supposed to be converted to a modern F-16 standard. If you combine that with the new F-16v purchase, how good is 165 modern F-16 vs whatever number of J-10B,C and J-16 that PLA has?

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It's a trivial addition considering the speed at which the PRC is churning out J-10B/C, J-16, and J-20. This addition will take years to actualize according to the deal. I would say the 165 F-16V is roughly equivalent to the same number of J-10C. China already has a lot of J-10B/C, I would say that at the time the F-16V conversions/procurement are all finished, the Eastern Military District would already have around the same number of J-10C alone. Not counting the large numbers of J-16, upgraded J-11B, (or even J-11D), and J-20.

Taiwan performing an amphibious invasion of the mainland - now I've heard it all loool

IMHO, we have to take the morale of the TW military into our consideration and calculation.
what and why are they fighting for and against. Low morale coupled with no clear objective means confusion with fighting doctrines and plans.
Besides, the average TW soldier is nicknamed strawberry soldier, cannot stand discomfort and hardship in peace time at all, let alone in a war footing.
I am tempted to say that as soon as those F16V arrive, the PLAF can simply openly invite such F16V pilots to defect to the Mainland and declare exchanging each plane for a certain amount of money as rewards.
that would sow the seed of suspicion among the TW air force hierarchy, so much so that each plane may be only half filled with fuel to prevent defection, thus eroding fighting effectiveness.

Jono said:

IMHO, we have to take the morale of the TW military into our consideration and calculation.
what and why are they fighting for and against. Low morale coupled with no clear objective means confusion with fighting doctrines and plans.
Besides, the average TW soldier is nicknamed strawberry soldier, cannot stand discomfort and hardship in peace time at all, let alone in a war footing.
I am tempted to say that as soon as those F16V arrive, the PLAF can simply openly invite such F16V pilots to defect to the Mainland and declare exchanging each plane for a certain amount of money as rewards.
that would sow the seed of suspicion among the TW air force hierarchy, so much so that each plane may be only half filled with fuel to prevent defection, thus eroding fighting effectiveness.

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From what I understand, the quality and the fighting spirit of the airforce is a departure from the poor reputation of its army conscripts. Pilots defecting to the other side is a very real possibility that both side take great care to stamp out.

They should not be underestimated.