PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

aqh said:

Even if they overload some air defenses Chinese targets are so distributed and will have enough warning time that they can scatter by the time the JASSM would hit. It might at most be able to take out a few dozen J20s if it gets really lucky but what else could it do?

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aqh said:

Even if they overload some air defenses Chinese targets are so distributed and will have enough warning time that they can scatter by the time the JASSM would hit. It might at most be able to take out a few dozen J20s if it gets really lucky but what else could it do?

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ACuriousPLAFan said:

There are plenty of fixed, soft, prized targets spread along and within the entire length of Chinese coastal regions.

Ports, train stations, runways, fuel depots, expressway overpasses, electrical substations, shipyards, you name it.

Of course, the US&LC will have to expend lots and lots and lots of JASSMs in order to target these. But China also has to defend every kilometer of her airspace along the entirety of the Chinese coastline, and expand that AoR both inwards and outwards.

There is also never a 100% interception rate guarantee for any air-defense systems anywhere around the world.

The attrition is going to be quite heavy for both sides.

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Biscuits said:

A lot of these targets are not politically tenable, if they're within mainland China. On Taiwan maybe, since there will be a disputed territory status between US and China once US launches an invasion.

Plane carrying JASSM needs to take off from somewhere. If you're Japan and you okayed an US plane to take off and said plane ends up killing dozens of Chinese civilians with a missile, well, you better prepare for every substation, hospital and water pump in Japan to become a target of PLA saturation attacks.

In order for US to successfully invade China, it paradoxically relies on not pissing off Chinese people too much. Because China can always decide to spam tactical and then strategic nukes in order to defend Taiwan, if US successfully backed them into a corner.

Attacking only the military targets, focusing on propaganda campaign, achieving gains on the ground in Taiwan (but not striking/invading China's mainland), has the best chance of forcing China into a settlement where concessions are made to America.

If Americans roll in generalplan Ost style and somehow manage to punch through Chinese conventional defenses, there's nothing stopping China from just saying: "whelp you're clearly the better fighter, but since you already have plans to kill millions of Chinese and there's no way we can defend the people on Taiwan from you, we will just nuke your invasion forces and all the staging bases".

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Biscuits said:

That is frankly an absurd scenario, as likely to happen as US pooling 4 carriers into 1 fleet and then all getting sniped by DF26.

JASSM are not fast missiles. If there was a base with dozens of J-20s in it, they would all be long gone in the air by the time any stragglers that made it through air defense arrive. There would be time to take off even against a hypersonic missile, at the distances which fights would happen at.

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ACuriousPLAFan said:

There are plenty of fixed, soft, prized targets spread along and within the entire length of Chinese coastal regions.

Ports, train stations, runways, fuel depots, expressway overpasses, electrical substations, shipyards, you name it.

Of course, the US&LC will have to expend lots and lots and lots of JASSMs in order to target these. But China also has to defend every kilometer of her airspace along the entirety of the Chinese coastline, and expand that AoR both inwards and outwards.

There is also never a 100%-interception rate guarantee for any air-defense systems anywhere around the world.

The attrition is going to be quite heavy for both sides.

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ACuriousPLAFan said:

1. In a limited conflict, there are indeed political angles to consider. But in a Pacific War 2.0 (practically an all-out war between China and the US&LC), "politically untenable" is simply a non-factor when in the eyes of both sides, all that matters is using whatever means necessary (excluding the large-scale usage of WMDs) to win the war and bring total defeat to the enemy.

2. Japan is a huge-spanning, highly-mountainous and densely-urbanized country. I hope that's all I need to say.

3. Unfortunately, civilian casualties and deaths are - Although I do hate to say it - Part-and-parcel of any war that is considerable in scale, intensity and duration, even if both sides strictly choose to target targets of military value only, and that both sides have zero intention and will to harm civilians.

4. Only when the PLA have been completely rendered ineffective such that they are only able to offer token, localized resistance, and that China's nuclear arsenal have somehow been effectively wiped out - Nobody in their right mind would ever think about attempting a 1937-style invasion of China. So forget about it.

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aqh said:

These systems have redundancy in that even if they are destroyed there can be other facilities that could be used in their place. In short the JASSM will simply not generate the effects relative to its costs so what the point of purchasing it?

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Biscuits said:

That doesn't answer my main point.

If America's objective is to take Taiwan, the territory of a nuclear armed superpower, America can inherently NOT afford to create any big sentiments among Chinese against them.

Because if that happens, even if the PLA was totally defeated and every town in Taiwan had an US garrison, China has a high chance of simply using nukes.

To win Taiwan, US needs to defeat China's military, while convincing Chinese civilians that they should not defend their country, that the Taiwan fight is just the government's agenda, and that America isn't there to hurt their way of life.

If they can win in the battlefield and convince most Chinese that life will carry on fine even if US occupies a Chinese province, they would have won.

Any form of engaging civilians on the mainland will be extremely counterproductive to that goal.

I'm not implying Americans are good guys who obey the rules of war, just that if they are gonna throw their whole military at an operation against China, they would most likely do it in a way that gives them a decent chance of achieving the objective.

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ACuriousPLAFan said:

Redundancy or not - Once something gets damaged to a considerable degree, knocked out or destroyed - It's going to take time, money, resources and effort to reset, recalibrate, reorganize, replan, reconstruct, replace etc, regardless of big amount or small amount.

And in times of war, all those are precious commodities.

Building takes weeks, months or years. Destroying takes just minutes or seconds.

Nobody is living on a resource-cheat, time-cheat, money-cheat mod. That includes China.


That's a very optimistic expectation from the US side.

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ACuriousPLAFan said:

Redundancy or not - Once something gets damaged to a considerable degree, knocked out or destroyed - It's going to take time, money, resources and effort to reset, recalibrate, reorganize, replan, reconstruct, replace etc, regardless of big amount or small amount.

And in times of war, all those are precious commodities.

Building takes weeks, months or years. Destroying takes just minutes or seconds.

Nobody is living on a resource-cheat, time-cheat, money-cheat mod. That includes China.


That's a very optimistic expectation from the US side.

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