PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
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I am normally hawkish, but right now is not the time to hike military budget. Most of the military needs fall in these category:
There is actually not much to expand budget on. Closest I can see is expansion of submarine fleets 2025+. Until carriers and strategic bombers matured for mass expansion, no new good purchase available. Only readiness and stockpile is improved, but those are pointless to rush. Those equires constant maintnence and expires. Best to wait til 1 year before conflict. In conclusion we should wait after 2025 to hike the budget when big budget is needed and useful.
Until new options available, no point for buying more military hardware. Best use budget to boost strategic position. It boosts military indirectly.
BRI: reduce damage of sanction = stronger trade during war
Dedollarize: weaken enemy economy
Expand auto export abroad: weaken enemy labor pool for mechanical maintnence.
Support foriegn insurgent: make enemy expand disproportional budget on enemies per your spending. Thats budget not used for peer conflict.
Reduce export dependence: lessen war impact on economy = longer war endurance.
Improve civil defense: minimize civilian damage at war.
Most of these are being done. I think civil defense is the only one I am not seeing much.
- Large need but not ready, money can't solve it: carriers, steath bombers
- Large need but not mature to scale up: SSN, SSBN
- Large need but already procured at high rate: J-20, Y-20, 075
- Needed but can be procured quickly before conflict starts. Pointless to rush: infantry gears, drones, ammumitions.
There is actually not much to expand budget on. Closest I can see is expansion of submarine fleets 2025+. Until carriers and strategic bombers matured for mass expansion, no new good purchase available. Only readiness and stockpile is improved, but those are pointless to rush. Those equires constant maintnence and expires. Best to wait til 1 year before conflict. In conclusion we should wait after 2025 to hike the budget when big budget is needed and useful.
Until new options available, no point for buying more military hardware. Best use budget to boost strategic position. It boosts military indirectly.
BRI: reduce damage of sanction = stronger trade during war
Dedollarize: weaken enemy economy
Expand auto export abroad: weaken enemy labor pool for mechanical maintnence.
Support foriegn insurgent: make enemy expand disproportional budget on enemies per your spending. Thats budget not used for peer conflict.
Reduce export dependence: lessen war impact on economy = longer war endurance.
Improve civil defense: minimize civilian damage at war.
Most of these are being done. I think civil defense is the only one I am not seeing much.
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there's plenty to spend on that is urgent, mature and scalable:
1. even more strategic weapons to ensure ultimate survival
2. more large recon drones for long range scouting of difficult environments
3. more J-16D to disrupt enemy communications and sensors
4. more air to ground targeting pods to finish off enemy ground forces
5. officer training so in case of high casualties, conscription can fill the gaps
- Conventional ballistic missiles fall under needed but procured at good rate. Nuclear arsenal is pointless to rush. With enough material lying around warhead is made very quckly. And no lack of delivery vehicle.
- Satelite launch rate is already very high.
- J-16 series are produced in adequete rate.
- This is more of a doctrine issue. Covered by drones and munitions.
- I dont feel China lacks in officer training. Falls under readiness level. Pointless to rush unless China plan to initiate conflict in 2 years.
those aims are already being sufficiently achieved without drastically hiking defence budget.
as for officer training in case of casualties, I do recall that PLA's political cadre also receive sufficient military training that they can take over command in case the commander goes down?
Hope for Chinese graphene chip in 3 years, this will kill Taiwan economy.
in case of rapidly escalating tensions based the 3 month timeline of the 2022 Pelosi escalation, China will not have time to build much.
Satellites are snapshots not real time. At best, video snapshots. Drones can conduct consistent real time observation and BDA, especially surface search radar equipped drones. Even the drone being shot down is a data point and can be used to redirect assets but its also much harder to shoot down HALE drones with very long range search radars.
Targeting pods are not just a doctrine issue, they provide much higher resolution imaging from much longer range than the smaller sensors on drones.
The 'political commisar'(政委) of the PLA has, essentially, always been knowledgeable about military affairs (like, one can even consider them to be like 'vice' or 2nd in command when it comes to military).
Because he is essentially selected from the military, and not a person appointed by the party to overlook the military (was the case a lot for USSR).
And the command has essentially always been:
Military matters? The highest rank military leader of the unit has the final say.
Political matters? The highest rank 'political commisar' has the final say.
And no, for most stuff, it's very much possible to separate the two, so there won't really be cases of something clearly being military, but the political commisar says its political and that he has to be listened to.
Edit: For better and more in depth, check out this channel (Chinese), as he has a lot on the PLA【TomCat团座的个人空间-哔哩哔哩】
Edit2: Here is a livestream of his, that is a lot more in depth about 政委 as well as how it's different from what USSR has
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Ok, there is a need to stockpile recon UAV and targeting pod. But there is no particular urgency. Those are not all that expensive and quick to make.
Pelosi visit is not example of immediate escalation. Even if Taiwan declare independence, nothing stops China declare hostility, but do not commit major action until a year later.
An example of emergency with no time to build up would be US start stationing troops and begin restricting Chinese trade by force. That would require immediate reaction because any day delay is a day deterioting.
Xi Yazhou's personal opinion on how the PLAGF should learn from the experience of the Ukrainian war.
The content is very long and I will not translate it. He pointed out the problems existing in the Russian military and pointed out the shortcomings of the current PLAGF infantry.
The Russians used tanks very poorly, their communication systems were poor, and they lacked confidentiality, which made their actions lose their suddenness. Their tactics, in the eyes of our army, are a simplified approach in the absence of modern technological conditions.
But the performance of the Russian infantry was very good, and their operations exposed some of the PLAGF's "bad habits".
Although there is no shortage of various individual equipment, it is rarely used during peacetime training to save funds.
The anti tank weapons of infantry still have shortcomings, especially the lack of advanced ATGM, The old-fashioned HJ-73 still holds a dominant position in PLAGF. This is simply due to a lack of funding and the need for war. The laziness of not wanting to use unfamiliar new weapons also makes the equipment speed of the new ATGM exceptionally slow.
In the Ukrainian war, it has been proven that anti tank missiles with a range of 4500 meters are still the most commonly used ATGM. In the case of outstanding performance in NLAW(but the range of the Javelin is too short and too complex), the current performance of HJ-73 cannot meet the requirements of modern warfare. Vehicles need to be equipped with better ATGMs, and infantry also need more affordable guided weapons.
Finally, and most importantly, the Gulf War is an irreplaceable case, and in possible future wars, one should be mentally prepared for intense street warfare. We won't perform poorly like the Russians, but war will inevitably bring losses and there shouldn't be overly idealistic judgments.
(This should be placed under the topic of the Ukrainian war, but considering that these views are for the sake of "possible future wars," I choose to place them here)