strategic ambiguity was designed to mske sure NEITHER side want to make a move and change status quo, within it there is an underpinning assumption that US intervension will be the decisive force for the outcome of the war. that assumption is very questionable now, so hanging on whether to change strategic ambiguity is really out of touch of reality.
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
I see, you are all in for equal opportunity free cremation.
That's why WSJ published an article how Taiwanese army has low morale.
It's unthinkable for an true ally to publically embarrass Taiwan like that, unless the intention was all along to reinforce the narrative that Taiwan is not worthy of saving by US servicemen if Taiwan does not view itself worthy of saving ( the same old instant Fall of Kabul blame on cowards/excuse).
These Westerners are cunning on how they flip and abandon you. If Japan conquered all of China in WW2, they would blame China for their unwillingness to fight, not lack of American assistance. What a fucking good "ally" that forgets you even exist.
It's unthinkable for an true ally to publically embarrass Taiwan like that, unless the intention was all along to reinforce the narrative that Taiwan is not worthy of saving by US servicemen if Taiwan does not view itself worthy of saving ( the same old instant Fall of Kabul blame on cowards/excuse).
These Westerners are cunning on how they flip and abandon you. If Japan conquered all of China in WW2, they would blame China for their unwillingness to fight, not lack of American assistance. What a fucking good "ally" that forgets you even exist.
This is a very “Chinese” way to look at it (from either side of the strait).
From the American perspective, strategic ambiguity merely exists as an opportunity to deflect and disrupt whenever necessary.
Look at what’s going on right now, in the media and by western governments, Xi is portrayed as some hellbent madman trying to launch a conquest war.
Yet only a few years ago Xi had engaged with Ma Ying-Jeou on a semi equal basis. Something that literally never happened before. Not only that, but ROC was given a preferential trade agreement that all they needed to do was sign! What does more for peace? Economic links and head of government engagement or sales of weapons? USA says it’s the latter…
I agree with most of what you say, I have already told you that I am not defending Taiwan, but I believe that the people of Taiwan do not believe the words of the CCP under this guarantee of one country, two systems, after what happened in Hong Kong.
They are not wrong. There won’t be one country two system for Taiwan since the DPP doesn’t even agree to the 92 consensus.
A supposed military operation by China against Taiwan has to be very well thought out.
We need to address Taiwan's military power, especially its level of preparedness and readiness. From an amphibious operations planner's perspective, Taiwan is not a particularly attractive target. While it is certainly true that the most notable amphibious attacks such as Normandy and Inchon have stunned their enemies against unlikely targets, there are limits to the possibilities of overcoming physical obstacles for a successful attack.
Taiwan's eastern side is mountainous and offers very few operational maneuvering opportunities for tanks without the support of engineering weapons, weapons that need constant protection to operate. Access to much of Taiwan's west side is blocked by muddy plains that stretch many kilometers off the coast, and to a country that has more than 200 Patriot PAC-3 launchers (15 batteries) and a dozen more Sky Bow II and III an air strike becomes expensive. An attack against the far north of the island in the Taipei area would quickly turn into urban terrain operations of a type that would likely not produce decisive results quickly, no wonder the Taiwanese army has so many ATGMs and attack helicopters. Similar difficulties would arise with attacks in the southern area between Tainan and Kao-hsiung.
By the process of elimination, the most attractive [though not the most likely] target for an amphibious attack on Taiwan would be the coastal region between Tung-Hsiao and San-Wan. Midway between Taipei's northern urban agglomeration and the centrally populated region around Taichung, this coastal area is free of irritating mud flats and offers open terrain suitable for the construction of a beach head and subsequent decisive manoeuvring. An accommodation in this area would cut the island in half and lay the foundations for subsequent operations in the north and south.
But the same area is heavily protected by Taiwan, protected to the point that any local incursions are costly in terms of human and material lives. Do not think that carrying out military operations with a wide margin for large human losses is easily possible, especially without the proper war doctrine for this, which I believe only the US has, since Chinese doctrine does not use the MBT T-96 as a means. landing. Attentive to the operations in the Pacific islands of the 2nd GM, where there was no alternative, the USA planned to be able to land even on organized and defended beaches, in the immediate vicinity of the target to be conquered. The symbol of this theory is the AAV-7 amphibious vehicle: an armored craft designed to transport infantry ashore under intense direct and indirect enemy fire, landed with cavalry support from the Marines' M1A2. The Russian school of amphibious warfare (which the Chinese is inspired by), on the other hand, intends to land on remote and unorganized beaches for defense, even far from the target, to be later reached by land. It's no coincidence that the Russians don't use CCs and crawler transport vehicles like the AAV7, but operate amphibious tanks, which despite being good, are far inferior to Taiwan's traditional CCs in terms of armor, their means of landing (Russians ) are also the helicopter, speedboats and BTRs.
Taiwan is made up of a great natural defense and the rest of rough terrain, excellent for defenders and terrible for attackers. Couple that with reasonable FAs, and the result is a nightmare for any attacker, even the PLA. I don't know of a country that, during the cold war, dug into mountains to set up air bases in the middle of the jungle and mountains.
Therefore, Taiwan was never synonymous with lack of preparation or fragility, quite the opposite. There is a PDF of a Chinese military man residing in Bern, who explained that at the height of the mobilization, Taiwan had 2 million heavily armed men ready for war, or in reserve waiting, today they have 1.6 million, which represents almost 7% of the total population.
Chinese generals studied various plans to invade Taiwan. All of them were extremely concerned about the strength of the army and its AAW defense, as well as the ability of the Taiwanese to make a very high price for this invasion.
In that case, all PLA infantry will be subjected to merciless heavy fire from Taiwanese artillery hidden in the jungle-covered mountains, or else the PLAAF will be subjected to massive AAe artillery fire. It's suicide to think about it without a 5th generation vector. Taiwanese forces may hold out for a long time in the local jungle, or long enough to make an operation unthinkable. It's not about winning, it's about being deterrent, they don't need to be superior but deterrent. These Chinese invasion plans recognize that the Taiwanese in reserve are reasonable marksmen, and for that very reason, they recommended using considerable and numerous forces for the attack.
Any Chinese occupation of parts of "Island Formosa" would cost a lot of blood. If the Chinese war machine can invade and conquer Taiwan?
I believe so, but with a few hundred thousand casualties to pay the price. But remember, planes don't occupy territory, you have to put “boots on the ground”. And then, an asymmetric war would make the PLA bleed for every inch of land, every stone, every bush and every corner. And that would make the cost of a military undertaking too high for such a small benefit.
If Taiwan has several bases hidden in the middle of the mountains and jungles, and the worst, the anti-aircraft systems are many aeromobiles, especially the AAW systems produced in Taiwan, which are mounted on light trucks with easy mobility like the Sky Sword II (TC- 2), and dozens of CS/MPQ-90 Bee Eye radars. In addition to Taiwan's anti-aircraft warfare doctrine, it favors the use of its AAW systems in areas covered with dense vegetation, where even drone sensors cannot detect systems below the glass of the trees.
The point was never to win, but to impose heavy losses. The Serbs' mistake was that they had too few anti-aircraft systems, which Taiwan has far too many. There is no detection without the use of airborne early warning aircraft in such a situation, as there are many targets to be detected at the same time and constantly, drones only do the work of supporting and attacking small platoons and brigades, as they have a detection limit of quantity targets and generally act against poorly fortified targets as occurred in Karabah, otherwise the Chinese will have to send thousands of drones. These are non-stealth drones that would be detected by various anti-aircraft systems in Taiwan. You should also know that the Taiwan Army has more than 2,000 Stingers in operation, plus 150 systems between MIM-72/M48 Chaparral and AN/TWQ-1 Avenger, which is hell for any surveillance drone, which would oblige the vectors operating at very high altitudes, greatly affecting their surveillance capacity.
In addition to the war doctrine, use a large part of its anti-naval artillery entrenched in dense areas of jungle and close to mangroves. Not to mention the infrastructures developed for war, such as trails, bridges and tunnels created during the cold war to use artillery in case of war. If the few skillful points for a landing would be saturated, why not hide the various artillery systems in the dense jungle of the jungle, in an infrastructure already created for that?
We need to address Taiwan's military power, especially its level of preparedness and readiness. From an amphibious operations planner's perspective, Taiwan is not a particularly attractive target. While it is certainly true that the most notable amphibious attacks such as Normandy and Inchon have stunned their enemies against unlikely targets, there are limits to the possibilities of overcoming physical obstacles for a successful attack.
Taiwan's eastern side is mountainous and offers very few operational maneuvering opportunities for tanks without the support of engineering weapons, weapons that need constant protection to operate. Access to much of Taiwan's west side is blocked by muddy plains that stretch many kilometers off the coast, and to a country that has more than 200 Patriot PAC-3 launchers (15 batteries) and a dozen more Sky Bow II and III an air strike becomes expensive. An attack against the far north of the island in the Taipei area would quickly turn into urban terrain operations of a type that would likely not produce decisive results quickly, no wonder the Taiwanese army has so many ATGMs and attack helicopters. Similar difficulties would arise with attacks in the southern area between Tainan and Kao-hsiung.
By the process of elimination, the most attractive [though not the most likely] target for an amphibious attack on Taiwan would be the coastal region between Tung-Hsiao and San-Wan. Midway between Taipei's northern urban agglomeration and the centrally populated region around Taichung, this coastal area is free of irritating mud flats and offers open terrain suitable for the construction of a beach head and subsequent decisive manoeuvring. An accommodation in this area would cut the island in half and lay the foundations for subsequent operations in the north and south.
But the same area is heavily protected by Taiwan, protected to the point that any local incursions are costly in terms of human and material lives. Do not think that carrying out military operations with a wide margin for large human losses is easily possible, especially without the proper war doctrine for this, which I believe only the US has, since Chinese doctrine does not use the MBT T-96 as a means. landing. Attentive to the operations in the Pacific islands of the 2nd GM, where there was no alternative, the USA planned to be able to land even on organized and defended beaches, in the immediate vicinity of the target to be conquered. The symbol of this theory is the AAV-7 amphibious vehicle: an armored craft designed to transport infantry ashore under intense direct and indirect enemy fire, landed with cavalry support from the Marines' M1A2. The Russian school of amphibious warfare (which the Chinese is inspired by), on the other hand, intends to land on remote and unorganized beaches for defense, even far from the target, to be later reached by land. It's no coincidence that the Russians don't use CCs and crawler transport vehicles like the AAV7, but operate amphibious tanks, which despite being good, are far inferior to Taiwan's traditional CCs in terms of armor, their means of landing (Russians ) are also the helicopter, speedboats and BTRs.
Taiwan is made up of a great natural defense and the rest of rough terrain, excellent for defenders and terrible for attackers. Couple that with reasonable FAs, and the result is a nightmare for any attacker, even the PLA. I don't know of a country that, during the cold war, dug into mountains to set up air bases in the middle of the jungle and mountains.
Therefore, Taiwan was never synonymous with lack of preparation or fragility, quite the opposite. There is a PDF of a Chinese military man residing in Bern, who explained that at the height of the mobilization, Taiwan had 2 million heavily armed men ready for war, or in reserve waiting, today they have 1.6 million, which represents almost 7% of the total population.
Chinese generals studied various plans to invade Taiwan. All of them were extremely concerned about the strength of the army and its AAW defense, as well as the ability of the Taiwanese to make a very high price for this invasion.
In that case, all PLA infantry will be subjected to merciless heavy fire from Taiwanese artillery hidden in the jungle-covered mountains, or else the PLAAF will be subjected to massive AAe artillery fire. It's suicide to think about it without a 5th generation vector. Taiwanese forces may hold out for a long time in the local jungle, or long enough to make an operation unthinkable. It's not about winning, it's about being deterrent, they don't need to be superior but deterrent. These Chinese invasion plans recognize that the Taiwanese in reserve are reasonable marksmen, and for that very reason, they recommended using considerable and numerous forces for the attack.
Any Chinese occupation of parts of "Island Formosa" would cost a lot of blood. If the Chinese war machine can invade and conquer Taiwan?
I believe so, but with a few hundred thousand casualties to pay the price. But remember, planes don't occupy territory, you have to put “boots on the ground”. And then, an asymmetric war would make the PLA bleed for every inch of land, every stone, every bush and every corner. And that would make the cost of a military undertaking too high for such a small benefit.
If Taiwan has several bases hidden in the middle of the mountains and jungles, and the worst, the anti-aircraft systems are many aeromobiles, especially the AAW systems produced in Taiwan, which are mounted on light trucks with easy mobility like the Sky Sword II (TC- 2), and dozens of CS/MPQ-90 Bee Eye radars. In addition to Taiwan's anti-aircraft warfare doctrine, it favors the use of its AAW systems in areas covered with dense vegetation, where even drone sensors cannot detect systems below the glass of the trees.
The point was never to win, but to impose heavy losses. The Serbs' mistake was that they had too few anti-aircraft systems, which Taiwan has far too many. There is no detection without the use of airborne early warning aircraft in such a situation, as there are many targets to be detected at the same time and constantly, drones only do the work of supporting and attacking small platoons and brigades, as they have a detection limit of quantity targets and generally act against poorly fortified targets as occurred in Karabah, otherwise the Chinese will have to send thousands of drones. These are non-stealth drones that would be detected by various anti-aircraft systems in Taiwan. You should also know that the Taiwan Army has more than 2,000 Stingers in operation, plus 150 systems between MIM-72/M48 Chaparral and AN/TWQ-1 Avenger, which is hell for any surveillance drone, which would oblige the vectors operating at very high altitudes, greatly affecting their surveillance capacity.
In addition to the war doctrine, use a large part of its anti-naval artillery entrenched in dense areas of jungle and close to mangroves. Not to mention the infrastructures developed for war, such as trails, bridges and tunnels created during the cold war to use artillery in case of war. If the few skillful points for a landing would be saturated, why not hide the various artillery systems in the dense jungle of the jungle, in an infrastructure already created for that?
14/taiwan-drills-military-as-concerns-over-china-grow/20210914210928-61414c5ac418158ad4ba31d9jpeg.jpg
As for the scorched earth policy, there is no way to disregard Taiwan's readiness to retaliate against a Chinese invasion, which contrary to what they make it seem, they have several underground shelters and mountains to withstand Chinese bombers, as well as secret bases in the middle of the jungle. One of the defense policies is for all reservists to take refuge in the mountains with predictions that would last a long time, which would allow for a considerable human war effort prolonged over months.
It has a mountain range called Yu Shan, 3,900m high, whose flanks are truffled with camouflaged fortresses, whose exit gates are made of steel. I would say that half of Taiwan's strength is the army, the other half is the mountains and valleys. One is not worth the other. In addition to the tunnels created by Chiang Kai-sheks.
Consequently, Taipei's strategy shifted to deterrence in terms of the human, military, financial and political costs that a war would inflict on China. This thought was confirmed in Taiwan's Quadrennial Defense Review 2021, recently published inclusive.
Taipei's defense plan is based on a hybrid warfare strategy - what is known as the "hedgehog doctrine", or better "porcupine doctrine". This ranges from conventional warfare tactics to “running away from enemy forces and exploiting their weaknesses” and a growing set of options that recognize China's proximity to Taiwan's coast. The idea, according to the defense review, is to use means to "resist the enemy on the opposite bank, attack him at sea, destroy him on the coast, annihilate him at the head of the beach and shoot them down in large quantities in the air" .
Several studies and simulations concluded that Taiwan may contain at least one or 3 Chinese military incursions on the island. In short, Taiwan's porcupine doctrine has three defensive layers. The outer layer deals with intelligence and reconnaissance to ensure that the defense forces are fully prepared, is based on a set of fixed infrastructures and mobile radars and sensors, which are protected by short-, medium- and long-range anti-aircraft systems.
Behind that come surveillance plans at sea with air support from US-supplied E-2 aircraft. The innermost layer depends on the geography and demography of the island. The ultimate goal of this doctrine is to survive and inflict losses against an air offensive good enough to organize a "wall of fire" that will prevent the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) from easily invading the island and securing air and air superiority win without a high cost.
Looking at these layers one by one, over the years, Taiwan has developed and maintained a sophisticated air early warning system to buy time should China launch an invasion. The aim is to ensure that Beijing does not have troops and transport ships ready to cross the Taiwan Straits in a surprise offensive. As a result, China would have to initiate any invasion with a long-range missile-based offensive aimed at eliminating Taiwan's radar installations, aircraft runways and missile batteries.
If this succeeds, China will have to break through the second layer of Taiwan's defense plan so that its troops can safely sail to the island. But when trying to cross the straits, China's navy would face a guerrilla campaign at sea - what is known as the "flea war". This would be accomplished using small agile ships armed with missiles and SSK submarines, supported by ASW helicopters and ground anti-ship missile launchers. There would be huge losses.
But breaking this layer will not guarantee a safe landing for the PLA on Ilha Formosa. Geography and population are the backbone of the defensive third tier. The PLA has the ability to mount a full-scale bombing campaign on the Taiwanese island, but landing on it and deploying as soon as possible is another matter.
Taiwan's short west coast, just 400 km long, has only a handful of beaches suitable for landing troops, meaning that Taipei's military strategists would have a reasonably easy job when it comes to figuring out where the PLA would try. to land – especially with the sophisticated reconnaissance technology it acquired from its ally in the United States and with its anti-aircraft artillery, there would soon be huge losses, mainly of Chinese air-mobile brigades and of air-dropped parachute brigades. This is Taiwan's main deterrent. In the same way that China is a deterrent against the US with less budget, the same is true for Taiwan, the issue is being deterrent, not having total superiority or chance of victory (even with big losses).
This would allow the Taiwanese army to set up a deadly shooting gallery to prevent PLA amphibious forces from entering the island. Even after the Chinese boots were on Taiwanese soil after the destruction of much of the AAe artillery, the island's mountainous topography and urbanized environment would give defenders an edge when it comes to preventing the progress of a ground invasion via ATGMs, particularly in urban areas and in the jungle.
The defense review also called for the development of a locally produced, ground-missile-based long-range attack capability, part of an ongoing move toward self-sufficiency for Taiwan's defense forces.
None of this is true in modern warfare, with UACV's, UAV's and missiles and rockets of various types. In addition, espionage and infiltrated elements must already be part of Chinese plans to retake the island. Airborne assaults and use of paratroopers behind the lines can be expected.
