PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

ecaedus · Feb 12, 2022

i believe even if tw delcared independence today, china will not retaliate by force. it simply doesn't meet the pre requisite conditions:

1. The PLA's navy, air and rocket force need to be able to fight and win against an intervention war in the westpac region led by a coalition of all of the deployable US, TW, Japanese, Korean, Australian forces. in this regard, as of today, neither the quantity nor the quality nor the sustainability of the PLA's weapons, personnel and platforms can meet this challenge.

2. The remaining PLA forces after "winning" the first phase of battle, need to fight and win against the rest of the US global forces, plus forces from the UK and EU in an attempt to hold TW.

When it comes to war the very worst condition must be taken into serious account, if somehow the war doesn't turn into a nuclear exchange (and if it did, china in its current state would surely lose as well), then the PLA must be able to accomplish the two points above in order to complete its objective of invading and capturing TW successfully.

The best thing to happen right now is for absolutely nothing to happen. above all else, PLA needs time.

FairAndUnbiased · Feb 12, 2022

ecaedus said:
i believe even if tw delcared independence today, china will not retaliate by force. it simply doesn't meet the pre requisite conditions:

1. The PLA's navy, air and rocket force need to be able to fight and win against an intervention war in the westpac region led by a coalition of all of the deployable US, TW, Japanese, Korean, Australian forces. in this regard, as of today, neither the quantity nor the quality nor the sustainability of the PLA's weapons, personnel and platforms can meet this challenge.

2. The remaining PLA forces after "winning" the first phase of battle, need to fight and win against the rest of the US global forces, plus forces from the UK and EU in an attempt to hold TW.

When it comes to war the very worst condition must be taken into serious account, if somehow the war doesn't turn into a nuclear exchange (and if it did, china in its current state would surely lose as well), then the PLA must be able to accomplish the two points above in order to complete its objective of invading and capturing TW successfully.

The best thing to happen right now is for absolutely nothing to happen. above all else, PLA needs time.

They should try it and find out then.

ecaedus · Feb 12, 2022

FairAndUnbiased said:
I've done an actual estimate on here before, they're undercounting by ~2x. 700 deployed warheads vs. 1300 deployed warheads is a much smaller gap.

That would be very good news if it's true. but nobody can say for sure unless ccp comes out and declares it so. even with that number, china needs to up its game on delivery platform diversity fast. it simply can't afford to go into a war without state of the art LR steal bombers or SSBNs.

FairAndUnbiased said:
2. Well the thing is China simply needs to have the ability to inflict great and permanent harm to not get dragged into a war. You can't stop the other side from declaring war on you. That's their decision. If they declare war you have 2 options, resist or surrender. Surrendering means your population gets sent to camps or displaced, the victor plunders your land of all resources and your country gets colonized for hundreds of years, you may be familiar with such an outcome. Resistance means you can extract concessions and the more you resist and more pain you inflict the more concessions you extract.

war needs an objective, the objective in this case of china is to capture TW and hold it without dragging the entire country into war. china is not able to accomplish this right now with the limited quantity and quality of weapons it has today, it needs time to build and expand. you are getting into the version of "us is here to eradicate the chinese civilization" discussion, i don't think it's relevant in this case.

Blitzo · Feb 12, 2022

AndrewS said:
Korea is essentially an extension of the Eastern Front towards Japan. But instead of long-range missions between Japan and China over the East China Sea, where both sides struggle to reach each other's bases, Korean and Chinese bases would be close enough for each other to be attacked frequently. Even if the Chinese side loaded up on SAMs, then yes, Chinese casualties would still be bad.

But it will still be a war of attrition that the US cannot credibly win, because they are unable to conquer and occupy even the Northeastern provinces of China. In such a scenario, you would end up with a Vietnam-style quagmire.

Korea and the US face a similar issue. If they want to reinforce Korea, they will have to use ships and planes, whilst China can rely on the road network which is far less vulnerable.

Yes, but I see Korea as roughly the equivalent of 2 or 3 Taiwans, plus the US forces.
So it is manageable for the Chinese Army.

If this was a Korea conflict without the rest of the western pacific conflict going on, then sure I agree with you that China could certainly make it very very painful for the US and possibly even win such a conflict of attrition.

But this entire scenario is occurring with the rest of the westpac high intensity conflict happening -- China will not have the aircraft to spare to give their ground forces air cover, not to mention the other systems that will be important for a high intensity air-ground conflict in Korea (including SRBMs, long range strike systems, IADS) will all be deployed to defend eastern and southern China as well, not to mention the capital and important industrial regions.

In other words, the PLA will not be able to provide much if any air cover and air defenses and strike/fires support to their ground forces in a Korea conflict, meaning you are essentially putting them at the mercy of US and SK air power in the region, and yes, South Korea does have a fairly potent air force, and both South Korea and US Forces Korea, are very capable on the ground with their armies as well.

What is going to happen is that PLA ground forces will be annihilated from the air and then mopped up by qualitatively equal if not marginally superior Korean and US ground forces, while Chinese transport infrastructure systems in China's northeast get delayed and degraded (at best) by US and Korean strikes. The combined result is that China will lose the ability to conduct any serious ground offensives fairly quickly, and China would have just thrown away a couple of group armies for no good reason.

It won't even come down to a war of attrition on the Korean peninsula.

Seriously, with the PLA of today, a westpac war would already stretch the PLAAF and PLAN to breaking point already, and now you want to open up another front that is just as dependent on airpower for success? All that such a move would do is hasten the PLA defeat in the overall conflict.

The end result would be the opposite of what you desired.

ecaedus · Feb 12, 2022

FairAndUnbiased said:
They should try it and find out then.

don't get me wrong, i support a military unification of TW. i simply believe now is not the right time, maybe 30 years down the line, sure.

also, TW declaring independence is as far fetched as china winning a war of attrition against the US as of today. purely hypothetical. if anything, TW enjoys the current situation more than ever. i would even go as far to say the next 20 years will be the best that TW has ever seen since the late 80s.

Blitzo · Feb 12, 2022

ecaedus said:
i believe even if tw delcared independence today, china will not retaliate by force. it simply doesn't meet the pre requisite conditions:

1. The PLA's navy, air and rocket force need to be able to fight and win against an intervention war in the westpac region led by a coalition of all of the deployable US, TW, Japanese, Korean, Australian forces. in this regard, as of today, neither the quantity nor the quality nor the sustainability of the PLA's weapons, personnel and platforms can meet this challenge.

2. The remaining PLA forces after "winning" the first phase of battle, need to fight and win against the rest of the US global forces, plus forces from the UK and EU in an attempt to hold TW.

When it comes to war the very worst condition must be taken into serious account, if somehow the war doesn't turn into a nuclear exchange (and if it did, china in its current state would surely lose as well), then the PLA must be able to accomplish the two points above in order to complete its objective of invading and capturing TW successfully.

The best thing to happen right now is for absolutely nothing to happen. above all else, PLA needs time.

While you are correct in saying that the peace would be desirable, I think you are incorrect in saying that in event of Taiwan doing something to formally move to independence, that China would not retaliate with force.

Essentially, in such an event, I think China's current strategy would involve a rapid attack and invasion of Taiwan combined with geostrategic preparation and signalling (either conveyed openly or through backroom diplomatic channels) that they are willing (for lack of a more direct description) to go to hell and take as much of the rest of the world with it as needed, over Taiwan's political status, and to be able to carry out that promise in event of foreign intervention.

Such a strategy of course is undesirable exactly for the reasons that you described, but it is the least worst strategy that they have. The alternative of allowing Taiwan to declare independence and the sequelae of it, I believe is simply unacceptable to them.

foxmulder · Feb 12, 2022

Bltizo said:
So now you are saying in a war of attrition China should open up a Korean front on land to engage the US?

- That would be a great idea, if China's air forces in such a conflict was not already so stretched to provide cover for the southern and eastern fronts, making PLA ground forces having to contend with ROCAF and USAF forces with threadbare air cover at best.
- It would also be a great idea, if like in the original Korean war the US and its allies also chose to not actually conduct strikes in China proper, allowing China to have a somewhat robust logistics network and staging ground.
- That would also be a great idea, if the South Korean Army and US ground forces stationed in Korea were not actually very formidable and advanced in their own right?

Which, in other words, is a terrible idea.

I never made any claim about your ethnicity.

Okay, I am going to explain to you why the Korean war and Vietnam war were absolutely very very different to the way in which any US-China war over Taiwan would be.
There are basically two major reasons:

1. Strikes to the production and logistics depths
2. The nature of the conflict and conditions for victory
3. The potential of the adversary

1: In both the Korean war and Vietnam war, the US was not able to conduct proper strikes into the production and logistical depths of their enemies.
In Korea, the US was not allowed to conduct strikes into China. In Vietnam, the US was also not allowed to conduct strikes into China. However, in a US-China war, the US most certainly will be conducting strikes into China to strike at production and logistical depths of China, both things that the US was not willing to do in Korea and Vietnam.
2: The Korean war and Vietnam war were primarily a contest of ground forces, and the conditions of victory in both of those wars was poorly defined, especially in Vietnam. Furthermore, the maturity of air power in the Korean war and Vietnam war was far less mature and far less integrated than it is now in US TTP. However, in a US-China war, such a conflict would be primarily air-naval in nature (US strengths), and the conditions of victory can be much better defined.
AndrewS suggested that a land front can be opened up in Korea on the peninsula to draw the US into a war of attrition on land. This is a terrible idea because all you will be doing is sending PLA Army units to suffer from US and South Korean air attacks because the PLAAF will be too busy in China's eastern and southern approaches providing their services there, not to mention further straining the country's internal wartime transport and logistics because you are now forced to move entire group armies to reinforce the korean theater.
3: the Korean war and the Vietnam war were ultimately the US fighting against proxies of the other rival superpower of the time, the USSR. In a US-China war, China is the rival superpower. That is to say, if the US enters the conflict, then the US will not be fighting this as a proxy war, it will be throwing everything they have.

China is not a favourite because:
1) proximity of the combat theater to China means that China has nowhere to retreat to, and its production facilities, major command nodes, are all right there, within a thousand kilometers of the theater of combat.
2) Chinese production prowess means nothing if their proximity to the combat theater allows them to be degraded
3) China may be willing to accept losses, but what if the US is also willing to accept losses? Hoping that the enemy's resolve will break before your own resolve, is a terrible strategic assumption.

1) It is your assumption that USA will dare to bomb Mainland this time. It can be the case. They will face the largest SAM force and the second largest air force and navy on earth. A China which can pretty much attack everything within 2nd island chain. My assumption war will be fight over Taiwan ADIZ.

2) Fight over Taiwan airspace will be an air battle with heavy involvement of air-defense systems (like Korea, like Vietnam) and navy assets. USA lost close to 3,000 aircrafts in Korea and over 10,000 aircrafts in Vietnam! So we can learn a lot from these previous wars, period.

3) You again assume air and naval battle is strength of US. It is, far from China but it is not closer to China because of the reasons we mentioned. (a- difference in current standing is not that different in the theater, b-production prowess of China is stronger, c-for China it is a more worthy fight: your assumption US will have willingness fight is interesting. They accepted 1million deaths with covid, maybe you are right lol. but I doubt it

I am pretty confident China is more motivated).

4) You see the last 5 decades somehow US increased the gap in air/sea capabilities. NO! The gap is decreased considerably. Time has worked in favor of China since Korea, not the other way around.

5) Vietnam and Korea had support of China and Russia. (In case of Korea, I see it more as China with support of Korea and Russia against NATO) This time China will have support of Russia, too! The moment an air/sea battle over Taiwan starts suddenly Chinese Su-35 and S-400 numbers will triple overnight

Blitzo · Feb 12, 2022

foxmulder said:
1) It is your assumption that USA will dare to bomb Mainland this time. It can be the case. They will face the largest SAM force and the second largest air force and navy on earth. A China which can pretty much attack everything within 2nd island chain. My assumption war will be fight over Taiwan ADIZ.

2) Fight over Taiwan airspace will be an air battle with heavy involvement of air-defense systems (like Korea, like Vietnam) and navy assets. USA lost close to 3,000 aircrafts in Korea and over 10,000 aircrafts in Vietnam! So we can learn a lot from these previous wars, period.

3) You again assume air and naval battle is strength of US. It is, far from China but it is not closer to China because of the reasons we mentioned. (a- difference in current standing is not that different in the theater, b-production prowess of China is stronger, c-for China it is a more worthy fight: your assumption US will have willingness fight is interesting. They accepted 1million deaths with covid, maybe you are right lol. but I doubt it I am pretty confident China is more motivated).

4) You see the last 5 decades somehow US increase the gap in air/sea capabilities. NO! The gap is decreased considerable. Time has worked in favor of China since Korea, not the other way around.

5) Vietnam and Korea had have support of China and Russia. (In case of Korea, I see it more as China with support of Korea and Russia against NATO) This time China will have support of Russia, too! The moment an air/sea battle over Taiwan starts suddenly Chinese Su-35 and S-400 numbers will triple overnight

Based on what you've written here you have not read anything that I've written over the last 5-6 pages and the key assumptions underlying my position.

1) Yes, absolutely the US will strike locations on mainland China. That is a key lynchpin of my position. If you believe the US will not strike locations on mainland China then there is no reason to have this discussion in the first place.
2) No, the US will not be sending in aircraft unsupported over the Taiwan strait to fight a battle against PLA air defenses and PLA fighters. The US will be using cruise missiles from bombers/ships/submarines to hit Chinese air bases and early warning radars to chip away at PLA defenses while using stealth fighters to wear away at PLA combat air patrols, and once PLA air defenses and fighter numbers start to dwindle, a large alpha strike will occur to cripple the rest of the PLA.
3) When the fight is closer to China the battle remains a strength of the US because the US is capable of striking at Chinese production facilities, PLA air bases, PLA command/control sites, where the US can leverage its superior air and naval forces to conduct strikes at range and to concentrate forces against weak points of China's defenses when appropriate. In other words, the US will possess the strategic initiative if the PLA has no way of crippling US air and naval forces in the region.
4) The gap in air and sea capabilities has declined between China and the US over the last four decades, but it has not declined enough between China and the US for China to be capable of defeating the US in a high intensity air and naval conflict.
5) Lol you might want to check what Russia's production capacity for that hardware is like.

Jingle Bells · Feb 12, 2022

Bltizo said:
If this was a Korea conflict without the rest of the western pacific conflict going on, then sure I agree with you that China could certainly make it very very painful for the US and possibly even win such a conflict of attrition.

But this entire scenario is occurring with the rest of the westpac high intensity conflict happening -- China will not have the aircraft to spare to give their ground forces air cover, not to mention the other systems that will be important for a high intensity air-ground conflict in Korea (including SRBMs, long range strike systems, IADS) will all be deployed to defend eastern and southern China as well, not to mention the capital and important industrial regions.

In other words, the PLA will not be able to provide much if any air cover and air defenses and strike/fires support to their ground forces in a Korea conflict, meaning you are essentially putting them at the mercy of US and SK air power in the region, and yes, South Korea does have a fairly potent air force, and both South Korea and US Forces Korea, are very capable on the ground with their armies as well.

What is going to happen is that PLA ground forces will be annihilated from the air and then mopped up by qualitatively equal if not marginally superior Korean and US ground forces, while Chinese transport infrastructure systems in China's northeast get delayed and degraded (at best) by US and Korean strikes. The combined result is that China will lose the ability to conduct any serious ground offensives fairly quickly, and China would have just thrown away a couple of group armies for no good reason.

It won't even come down to a war of attrition on the Korean peninsula.

Seriously, with the PLA of today, a westpac war would already stretch the PLAAF and PLAN to breaking point already, and now you want to open up another front that is just as dependent on airpower for success? All that such a move would do is hasten the PLA defeat in the overall conflict.

The end result would be the opposite of what you desired.

Are you saying that the current South Korean military plus the US forces in Korea is stronger than the total PLA military power China can put into the Korean Peninsula? If so, please elaborate how.

gelgoog · Feb 12, 2022

tphuang said:
This pushes the view that somehow Russia hasn't been punished enough by the west for it's actions. The sanctions so far against Russia has hit the Russian economy and industry really hard.

Sure. But over the past decade Russia has managed to replace most of these products. What does not kill you makes you stronger.

tphuang said:
After buying close to 100 military aircraft a year in mid 2010s, Russia has been able to only order around 20 a year in the past couple of years. That should give you an idea of who hard Western sanctions have hurt Russian economy and cut off access to western suppliers and technologies.

Uh. No. Sanctions has nothing to do with it in this case. The Flanker aircraft sold to the Russian Federation AFAIK never used Western made systems. You are confusing this with exports which in some cases used Western made components.

Some people talk about exports of some Su-30 aircraft which used Western made avionics and cockpit systems. But the Su-35 uses all Russian systems for example. And the Su-35 cockpit and avionics are more advanced than any Su-30 cockpit and avionics. The Su-34 never used imported electronics in the first place. There was an issue where the Flanker HUD used to be bought from Ukraine but they rather easily replaced that with a Russian HUD. This was just use of legacy suppliers from Soviet times.

This had no impact on combat aircraft production. The decrease in the amount of produced aircraft is just a simple case of design and production cycles. You have to see that Russia even originally planned to upgrade a lot of Su-27 aircraft to Su-27SM3 standard. These upgraded aircraft are competitive with modern Su-30SM aircraft. In the end the government gave up and decided to build all new aircraft since the cost has gone way down and the production lines had some slack after exports decreased.

Most of the Russian Federation's fighter aircraft have already been replaced or upgraded to 4+ generation status. The Su-57 is still ramping up production and it should not get into large scale manufacture until the Su-57M is available. The Su-34M is currently still in the test stage. Currently the major shortage in terms of combat aircraft is in terms of ground attack aircraft and fighter bombers. Only once the Su-34M test stage is done and any deficiencies are corrected will production start again. There is still no replacement for the Su-25 Frogfoot and the factory for that is in Georgia. Some other country might simply just not bother production a ground attack aircraft. The US is going that route. But Russia might design an aircraft specific for the ground attack role. It should just take a really long time. The MiG-31 has been upgraded to MiG-31BM status so now it has more modern avionics. The PAK-DP is still in the design stage.

In short Russia does not have any new combat aircraft type they are particularly interested in producing right now. So that is why production slowed down. Not economics or sanctions or whatever.

tphuang said:
It's a huge shock to Russia's entire system. And if Russia does invade Ukraine soon, there will be economic warfare against Russia from the west. That's why Putin was so desperate to get Chinese partnership recently.

I do not think they are particularly concerned in terms of military hardware or basic goods anymore. They are concerned in terms of some kinds of consumer products and high technology items as well as technology sharing in general. But that was always a problem.
I think people underestimate the possibility of Russia eventually accepting a war. Especially if the West engages in so called preemptive sanctions.

In a similar way to how the US blocking exports of oil to Japan precipitated their plan to invade the Dutch East Indies in WW2 and Southeast Asia in general if the US blocks technology exports to Russia and China then they might simply decide they don't have anything to lose by expanding their sphere of influence and in fact it might be dangerous for them not to in case the US tries to push their technological advantage later down the road against them.

If I was China I would just invade Taiwan and South Korea delivering a massive blow to the global semiconductor industry. I think I said this here before.

PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

ecaedus

New Member

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier

ecaedus

New Member

Blitzo

Lieutenant General

ecaedus

New Member

Blitzo

Lieutenant General

foxmulder

Junior Member

Blitzo

Lieutenant General

Jingle Bells

Junior Member

gelgoog

Lieutenant General