PLA Air Force news, pics and videos

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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Yeahh, but Chiang had unrealistic dream to re-take mainland China at that time until his death

tamsen_ikard said:

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Relevant quote:

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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simply big nothing, also there are a lot of PLA spies deep within Taiwanese military, thats why the USA would never sell F-35 or other advanced weapons

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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Hi Jono,

I will make an opposite case, so please bear with me.

These war talk is making me uneasy, cause my sister and her family lived in Taiwan. From what I gather from my Taiwanese brother in law, is that KMT mess thing up during the last presidential election and Hkg protest is being funded by the DPP to make a case against the one country 2 system. With the economic difficulties being experience and the brain drain to the mainland, their is a sense of despair and they are looking anything for a way out. Unfortunately the DPP policy of decoupling from the mainland is the main culprit for the decline, the south/south policy cant replace what the mainland can bring.

What Im trying to say is nobody want to be invaded, even though we are relative, I dont want you to illegally squat in my house, and if we invade Taiwan successfully , we will lose Taiwan forever.

The solution is still peaceful integration, we are all Han Chinese, shared the language and the culture. All is needed is time and open borders for trade and communication, War will only bring hatred and misery and will take many generation to fix it.

It looks like Hotan airport is getting an expansion.

Kashgar Airport is being expanded as well, with new hangars under construction.

Everything is in Brahmos-range, is this really wise? Only way to really do anything would be to construct a no-fly zone over northern India to block any attempts at counterstrikes; Urumqi is way more defensible by use of distance.

Can't believe that no one reported this yet.

HONG KONG—Beijing alleged that a U.S. spy plane entered a no-fly zone it had designated over an area where the Chinese military was conducting live-fire drills, condemning the overflight as a provocative act.

An American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft “severely disrupted regular Chinese training activities” on Tuesday by intruding into airspace over an area where the People’s Liberation Army’s Northern Theater Command was carrying out the exercises, a spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry said.

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Very dangerous move. Trump is nuts.

siegecrossbow said:

Can't believe that no one reported this yet.

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Very dangerous move. Trump is nuts.

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Everyone snoops on each other's exercises especially naval ones in open water. This isn't too unprecedented.

ougoah said:

Everyone snoops on each other's exercises especially naval ones in open water. This isn't too unprecedented.

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Look at Russia's naval exercise the spying was almost everyday.