PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

drowingfish said:

what biscuits says actually makes sense. Taiwan's defense strategy also seems to be gravitating towards the same approach, which is to destroy PLA's landing capabilities and prevent once and for all landing of ground forces. the logic here is that regardless of what the PLA can do in the air and on the sea, without amphibious ships it cannot land on Taiwan. this will give the US time to deploy its forces and break down PLA's blockade from the outside.

the solution to this, aside from building more ships and bolstering air defense, also includes attacking Penghu and Matsu early on. because it will force the Taiwan coastal defense forces to choose to either engage PLA ships and risk exposing fire positions, or let PLA have those islands easily.

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Theres however absolutely no reason China would rush in with troops first. That would be committing a mistake even a 3rd rate power like Israel knows to avoid. Even if KMT restarts the civil war with a horrible terror attack on par with 9/11, CPC is way above being baited by emotions into sending in troops unsupported.

Instead, a restarted civil war is likely to start with China ordering its civilians inside Taiwan to evacuate into safe zones, followed by bombing everything that isn't a safe zone. Once the cohesion/command of Taiwanese rebels have been broken, a relatively small landing party can hold port cities, paving way for a much larger army force that will clear isolated resistence fighters, including out of tunnels and trenches, if such structures have been prepared.

Since the army and bomber forces will be able to shoulder almost all of the counter insurgency at home, the navy and air force's fighters are more or less not needed and can focus entirely on defending/deterring against a potential US invasion.

China should be able to launch over 1 million munitions in 1 week. It is not even estimated there are 1 million total anti-government fighters on Taiwan, but for additional safety, the preparative air campaign would likely last 2-4 weeks. 2-4 weeks is a critical point, because at that time, many supplies start to go bad without electricity, rebel fighters will start to lack clean water and food.

If US is serious about taking over Taiwan, they must achieve a decisive victory in just the span of these 2-4 weeks, and at the same time convince most Chinese that the province isn't worth fighting for.

Biscuits said:

Instead, a restarted civil war is likely to start with China ordering its civilians inside Taiwan to evacuate into safe zones, followed by bombing everything that isn't a safe zone. Once the cohesion/command of Taiwanese rebels have been broken, a relatively small landing party can hold port cities, paving way for a much larger army force that will clear isolated resistence fighters, including out of tunnels and trenches, if such structures have been prepared.

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This is an overly optimistic idea. Giving the enemy time is the biggest mistake. The lessons of the Ukrainian war are already numerous, and Putin has seriously underestimated Zelensky's cunning. All negotiations and humanitarian factors have become Zelensky's disguise for concealing military actions.
They are not as stubborn as Hamas fighters, but you cannot give them the opportunity to gather and walk towards the arsenal.

The Israelis are doing this because they simply do not want the Palestinians to survive, so they are making an impossible demand. Your massive ammunition consumption plan completely underestimates the PLA's precision strike capability, which is inefficient and meaningless.

The suddenness of action always comes first. Although the enemy is filled with opportunists, Zelensky has given the island's leadership confidence (they do not need to consider the opinions of the people during wartime), and they will definitely resist until they are in a desperate situation, until the hope given by the Americans completely disappears.

Biscuits said:

Theres however absolutely no reason China would rush in with troops first. That would be committing a mistake even a 3rd rate power like Israel knows to avoid. Even if KMT restarts the civil war with a horrible terror attack on par with 9/11, CPC is way above being baited by emotions into sending in troops unsupported.

Instead, a restarted civil war is likely to start with China ordering its civilians inside Taiwan to evacuate into safe zones, followed by bombing everything that isn't a safe zone. Once the cohesion/command of Taiwanese rebels have been broken, a relatively small landing party can hold port cities, paving way for a much larger army force that will clear isolated resistence fighters, including out of tunnels and trenches, if such structures have been prepared.

Since the army and bomber forces will be able to shoulder almost all of the counter insurgency at home, the navy and air force's fighters are more or less not needed and can focus entirely on defending/deterring against a potential US invasion.

China should be able to launch over 1 million munitions in 1 week. It is not even estimated there are 1 million total anti-government fighters on Taiwan, but for additional safety, the preparative air campaign would likely last 2-4 weeks. 2-4 weeks is a critical point, because at that time, many supplies start to go bad without electricity, rebel fighters will start to lack clean water and food.

If US is serious about taking over Taiwan, they must achieve a decisive victory in just the span of these 2-4 weeks, and at the same time convince most Chinese that the province isn't worth fighting for.

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no you can't just telegraph your intent then sit there and let the defenders get ready, that kind of decision will cost a lot of lives. Taiwan's weakness lies in its terrible readiness state, it is quite susceptible to a surprise attack. the less preparation time China uses, the better.

In the taiwan conflict, there will be alot EW and missiles usage.

In my shoe, I would bring tons of EW drones and equip balloons with EW to disrupt GPS coordinates and signals so that enemy's missile would lose their accuracy. Then pummel Taiwan military base, troops and tunnels with missile and shells like Bukmut.. Line up the entire China's coast with navy ships and submarine then fire at the same time along with land rocket launcher.

Ground troop invasion is not necessary. Taiwan is very small. A territory with all military equipment destroyed except for troops with rifles hiding out, you can call this a victory. then leave it alone..

zhangjim said:

This is an overly optimistic idea. Giving the enemy time is the biggest mistake. The lessons of the Ukrainian war are already numerous, and Putin has seriously underestimated Zelensky's cunning. All negotiations and humanitarian factors have become Zelensky's disguise for concealing military actions.
They are not as stubborn as Hamas fighters, but you cannot give them the opportunity to gather and walk towards the arsenal.

The Israelis are doing this because they simply do not want the Palestinians to survive, so they are making an impossible demand. Your massive ammunition consumption plan completely underestimates the PLA's precision strike capability, which is inefficient and meaningless.

The suddenness of action always comes first. Although the enemy is filled with opportunists, Zelensky has given the island's leadership confidence (they do not need to consider the opinions of the people during wartime), and they will definitely resist until they are in a desperate situation, until the hope given by the Americans completely disappears.

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Aren't you overly optimistic in thinking things don't take time? People said Russia would conduct rapid offense in Ukraine, that Israel would conduct rapid offense in Gaza and Ukraine would conduct a fast counteroffensive. Yet what happened in reality? In that sense, 2-4 weeks is an extremely short time.

Expecting the PLA to have counteroffensive results in the civil war after just hours-days would be completely contrary to what we've seen in other wars around the world.

It's not like anti government fighters will have room to do stuff once they're being rained on by shells.

By launching an all out air and artillery campaign, the government will also drive a wedge between the rebel leadership and local population. Civilians will have no choice but to evacuate on routes and areas planned by Beijing, not Taipei.

Militaries require civilian support to sustain, by removing that, the enemies devolve from a cohesive armed group into individual cells.

The only drawback is a higher collateral damage, but only inside Taiwan. And that's a cost China should absolutely bear, because the alternative (showing any form of weakness) risks being invaded by US and Japan, to have Taiwan province and other areas come under occupation by these powers is as bad for China as it is for Ukraine losing their whole country to Russians, as bad as Israel losing the Levant to Palestine, and as bad as Russia losing the Moscow-st Petersburg-volgagrad region to Germany.

Chances are also that the KMT will collapse completely only after the bombing of a few major cities and once the locals overwhelmingly side with the government, allowing China to land before there's that much devastation. They're closer in spirit to HK roaches than they're to Taliban.

Biscuits said:

Aren't you overly optimistic in thinking things don't take time? People said Russia would conduct rapid offense in Ukraine, that Israel would conduct rapid offense in Gaza and Ukraine would conduct a fast counteroffensive. Yet what happened in reality? In that sense, 2-4 weeks is an extremely short time.

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I don't really care about collateral damage, but the fact is that bombing cities often doesn't make the other party succumb to pressure, and not all countries can be as indifferent to international reputation as NATO or Israel.

Ukraine cleverly utilized online propaganda and Western stereotypes of Russia to portray itself as a holy warrior who killed a large number of "Russian orcs".
This kind of promotion has largely garnered sufficient support for oneself and stabilized public sentiment. To this day, despite the anxious situation of the war, the Ukrainian government is still able to allow many people to go to the battlefield in a daze of ignorance.

So, why give the enemy time to fully mobilize and activate propaganda tools?

Considering that opponents will inevitably use various rogue means, under the protection of the United States, this will only become an excellent excuse for humanitarian intervention.
Unification war is the use of absolute power against the enemy, but the purpose is not to pursue absolute destruction of islands.
It is inevitable to turn cities into rubble in war, but you cannot pursue the goal of complete destruction from the beginning.

Biscuits said:

Aren't you overly optimistic in thinking things don't take time? People said Russia would conduct rapid offense in Ukraine, that Israel would conduct rapid offense in Gaza and Ukraine would conduct a fast counteroffensive. Yet what happened in reality? In that sense, 2-4 weeks is an extremely short time.

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That's the fault of the Russians, not of the concept. Russia's failure to successfully blitzkrieg Kiev and change the regime is a reflection of them betting on the wrong things (a bunch of intelligence operations clearly failed as well as Seizure of Hostomel) and underestimating the enemy.

In my opinion,

I don't think that China needs to "seize" Taiwan in order to pull off a rapid offensive operation. China doesn't need to seize Taiwan. They need to cripple it as a military combatant and take them out of the war. Once that's done, all of their focus can switch to other participants of the war (Japan/USA/Australia), and Taiwan becomes a glorified COIN operation.

To that end, what we really should be looking at is how long it would take the PLA to seize key islands around Taiwan and how long it would take to take out Taiwan's IADS.

Once that's done, the high-intensity part of the conflict is over and Wing-Loongs plus dozens of other drone types can do the rest of the fighting. How long will that high-intensity part of the conflict take? I think 2-4 weeks is sufficient time.

How I would use the China navy is to line them up along the China coast like the Great Wall.. The ships has its own antimissile defense system but having multilayered antimissile defense to protect them from land is an advantage. If the ships adventured out far distances, of course the ships will lose the antimissile defense that they enjoyed at the land.

zhangjim said:

I don't really care about collateral damage, but the fact is that bombing cities often doesn't make the other party succumb to pressure, and not all countries can be as indifferent to international reputation as NATO or Israel.

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NATO has cleverly taken itself out of the table by polarising the UN. No one that isn't NATO will condemn China, and NATO will condemn China just for existing anyways. Both China and Russia can veto.

zhangjim said:

Ukraine cleverly utilized online propaganda and Western stereotypes of Russia to portray itself as a holy warrior who killed a large number of "Russian orcs".
This kind of promotion has largely garnered sufficient support for oneself and stabilized public sentiment. To this day, despite the anxious situation of the war, the Ukrainian government is still able to allow many people to go to the battlefield in a daze of ignorance.

So, why give the enemy time to fully mobilize and activate propaganda tools?

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It isn't that easy to dislodge around ~300k fighters, especially if they're hiding around civilians. What if a blitz/infiltration doesn't work, wouldn't that give anti government forces very high morale?

Ukraine is indeed rather succesful, perhaps only so, at getting people to fight. I can agree with that. That is precisely why China must also harness similar types of thinking. By keeping the army loss free and using air force/artillery, the Chinese government will be able to show its people the bloodless destruction of large numbers in Jap sympatizers and American infiltrators. Meanwhile, ROC will have minimal victories to show their sympatizers.

zhangjim said:

Considering that opponents will inevitably use various rogue means, under the protection of the United States, this will only become an excellent excuse for humanitarian intervention.
Unification war is the use of absolute power against the enemy, but the purpose is not to pursue absolute destruction of islands.
It is inevitable to turn cities into rubble in war, but you cannot pursue the goal of complete destruction from the beginning.

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A plurality if not majority of aid organizations have Chinese influence or are outright Chinese owned. Or are at least truly "humanitarian".

China isnt going to commit genocide against its own people or do anything near that sort. It has the logistics capability to provide vital aid to Taiwan, while directing friendly aid organizations. It just needs to ensure none of that aid reaches anti government forces.

Random destruction isn't the goal, but if the KMT does the ultimate taboo and calls for another 8 nations war/Imperial Japan invasion, negotiation can only begin with 100% anti government forces removal.

By not answering by engaging with all weapons available, China risks emboldening America and Japan to invade. Using every bomb and artillery shell in the arsenal is the surefire way to deny any type of victory to would-be invaders and their collaborators.

Question a potential blockade on Taiwan. Will it be a full blockade, or will there be civilian supplies allowed?

Without water, energy, food, the will of resistence will collapse. But this would also mean great suffering of civilian. Enemy will just stockpile for themselves and leave civilian on their own.

Alternatively China could block all foriegn contact with Taiwan, but keep a negotiated humanitarian supply train between mainland and Taiwan. This way people can live but military are starved of weapons. Thoughts?