PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

Sinnavuuty

Senior Member
Registered Member
SEAL Team 6 training for a Taiwan AR scenario.
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I wonder what are they training for. Provocation, assistance, or rescue operations?
Amphibious landing counter actions such as Special Reconnaissance Against Amphibious Landing.

Marking of Amphibious Landing Zones on Beaches.

Advanced Air Guidance.

Exfiltration.

etc.;
 

Index

Senior Member
Registered Member
How about Air Support? Airmobile landing? Logistical support? CSAR?

Among the helicopter missions during the amphibious assault we have:
Assault - Transports troops and equipment to the beachhead;
Combat logistics - Transports ammunition, fuel, supplies and other cargo;
Mobility of troops on the beach - Allows troops to move faster inland from the beachhead;
Escort - Is done by armed or specialized helicopters and must defend against enemies both on the ground and in the air;
Close air support - Done by armed helicopters;
Medical evacuation - Medvac;
Search and rescue - CSAR;
Visual and armed reconnaissance;
Air control for long-range air assault operations;
C3 for OTH assault operations of LCACs and other amphibious vessels;

What do you think a helicopter does in an Amphibious Operation? Do you really think that only attack helicopters are used for Air Support? If you think so, you are more lost than a blind man in a firefight. An Amphibious Operation is a type of operation that does not even need an enemy to go wrong, such is the number of variables involved and things that can go wrong.
I think you're confused by having read too many carefully choreographed American exercises where they try to land in 10 000s, simulating 100 000s of troops at once like in partisan suppression such as Iraq or Syria. And everything must be done perfectly according to some theorist's hypothesis. Yet these theorists routinely disregard the reality of combat, they can invent 100 variables that must be perfect for exercises, but in real world, their advice to tankers dealing with FPVs is "look up" and for mine fields it's "drive around".
Just to use as an example, the type of combined operation to make the use of attack helicopters for Air Support functional, the PLA must avoid deconfliction of the airspace as much as possible, this will be extremely difficult in an environment saturated with drones, missiles, helicopters and aircraft throughout the airspace in the theater of operations during the landing.

I really try to understand the triumphant mentality here that the PLA should achieve during a large amphibious assault operation but unfortunately the real world of military operations is much more complex than most here suppose, Taiwan can take measures to make the challenges described above even more insurmountable for the PLA and this is much easier for the defending side considering an Amphibious Operation.
In reality a middle power like Ukraine can constantly do amphibious ops against even much heavier firepower. At the cost of throwing manpower at the problem. And when it comes for China to defend their own homes like Ukrainians have been doing, why would they also not accept heavier losses?

PLA will not try to achieve some day 1 clean landing as Americans did in Inchon, although certainly maybe it's possible with enough fire suppression, but comes with many unknown variables. Instead they will send a lot of waves of light boats like AFU is doing on Crimea. But what Russians have is air, artillery, air defense and early warning, unless US can hurry land it's own troops in vast scale on Taiwan first, this capability is non existent.

ROCA can repel some speedboats but at least some will make root. Then from there, a much larger unit can be landed. To repel probing assaults, the much less armed KMT need to bring in their heavier weapons and larger troop concentrations, with a sky environment controlled by PLA. They make a column, they're gonna get massacred, but if they don't, they may arrive too late.

The situation of bombing over ROC held areas is going to be as bad as Gaza or possibly several times worse, depending on how creative PLA is in mobilising as many munitions as possible on target. That's not a state of being where troops can frivolously come out or even try to get recon on where amphibious probes will land. You'll have comms cut, mass panic, hiding in tunnels/shelters. So whatever ROCA makes it out to face the PLA probing groups would only be the most lucky (to have accidentally stumbled on the landing location and survived the road there) and brave (for leaving their tunnels and fighting on beaches as organized resistence).
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
^
the reason we often see russian attack heli/su-25 do fire support with rocket run was soviet cold war doctrine lead to massive number of unguild dumbfire rocket being product for their mi-24/su-25 fleet

PLA did not have this legacy and doesn't suffer from huge old rocket stockpile need to be use somehow

the reason we often US attack heli/a-10 warthog doing close range gun-run was also the same

US doctrine favor gun CAS , apache being build with 30mm chain-gun carry 1200 round , A-10 gau-8 since cold war , huge stock pile of ammo go with it to this day

PLA also did not have this legacy and big old ammo stockpile need to be use

Z-10 attack helicopter only armed with single barrel 23mm cannon with 300 rounds : not really great at close range gun-run CAS
JH-7 attack aircraft also have the same twin barrel 23mm gun as lated mig-21 with 300 rounds not great at close range gun-run too

It’s the other way around. Russia is using rockets because that’s basically all their Su25s can use due to massive chronic under-investment since the fall of the USSR.

What money they did have were overwhelmingly used for big ticket hardware purchases at the expense of far more operationally relevant accessories and expendables like pods and PGMs.

In a way, the VKS of today is like the PLAAF of the late 90s and early 20s. Their top, and realistically, only priority was to prevent enemy air superiority. If the VKS could stop NATO from establishing air superiority, then the Russian ground forces will just steamroll NATO ground forces. CAS is basically considered a massive luxury while deep penetration strikes are for the likes of Iskanders.

In a way, the Russian military was the textbook example of a peacetime military, where there wasn’t really any expectation of seeing real combat, so the procurement decisions were determined by institutional prestige over operational need.

The PLA OTOH, always had Taiwan looming on the horizon, so that helped to massively focus their attention on far more practical considerations.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
How about Air Support? Airmobile landing? Logistical support? CSAR?

Among the helicopter missions during the amphibious assault we have:
Assault - Transports troops and equipment to the beachhead;

So your idea of how to assault a heavily defended beachhead is to send transport helicopters in to fast rope troops directly onto the beach?

Please show me anywhere that suggests such suicidal silliness outside of photo ops.

Combat logistics - Transports ammunition, fuel, supplies and other cargo;

Using helicopters? And dropping off on the actual frontline?

Mobility of troops on the beach - Allows troops to move faster inland from the beachhead;

So, first you want helicopters to drops troops onto the beach during the first wave assault, then you want helicopters to pick up troops from the beach after is secured to do more frontal air assaults?

Tell me you are dreaming up scenarios to ‘prove’ the relevance of MANPADs without telling me you are dreaming up scenarios to ‘prove’ the relevance of MANPADs.


Escort - Is done by armed or specialized helicopters and must defend against enemies both on the ground and in the air;

Only needed when there is something worth escorting.

Close air support - Done by armed helicopters;

Already mentioned, can and will be done at ranges beyond the engagement range of MANPADs. Going in closer is when opfor has no credible ability to threaten your helicopters.

Medical evacuation - Medvac;

Not from live combat zones.

Search and rescue - CSAR;

The only credible example. But it’s a total crapshoot on what the actual scenario will be depending on where the pilot lands.

Visual and armed reconnaissance;

Why does it have to be done with manned helicopters in the drone age?

Air control for long-range air assault operations;

After taking the beaches, what need is there for more long range air assaults?

C3 for OTH assault operations of LCACs and other amphibious vessels;

Why does this have to be done by helicopters, and if you want to use helicopters for this, why do they need to get within MANPAD range of the coast to do it?

What do you think a helicopter does in an Amphibious Operation? Do you really think that only attack helicopters are used for Air Support? If you think so, you are more lost than a blind man in a firefight.

As if more obvious proof was needed of bad faith discussion than to make up silly straw men arguments.

An Amphibious Operation is a type of operation that does not even need an enemy to go wrong, such is the number of variables involved and things that can go wrong. Just to use as an example, the type of combined operation to make the use of attack helicopters for Air Support functional, the PLA must avoid deconfliction of the airspace as much as possible, this will be extremely difficult in an environment saturated with drones, missiles, helicopters and aircraft throughout the airspace in the theater of operations during the landing.

And when did anyone say the air ops part of a combined arms amphibious assault is easy? The point is MANPADs adds almost nothing to the difficulty for the attacker in such operations because there are already a lot of longer ranged SAMs they will always need to be able to deal with and because of the realities of war in the drone age.

All you seem to want to do is engineer unrealistic scenarios where your precious MANPADs can actually contribute something.

I really try to understand the triumphant mentality here that the PLA should achieve during a large amphibious assault operation but unfortunately the real world of military operations is much more complex than most here suppose, Taiwan can take measures to make the challenges described above even more insurmountable for the PLA and this is much easier for the defending side considering an Amphibious Operation.

The only one letting their emotions and personal attachments cloud their judgement is you.

There are things Taiwan can do to make amphibious ops harder for the PLA, but doubling down on MANPADs isn’t one of them.
 

Wrought

Junior Member
Registered Member
Interestingly bad discussion the last couple pages but it did raise something. I wonder if something old will become new again ... There certainly enough scope for specialised variants and funnies. ;)

View attachment 135913

These were short-range unguided rockets launched by a single-use platform. Which was perfectly acceptable for the time, but this is not 1944 anymore. PLAN already
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from their Zubr LCACs.
 
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