PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

Gloire_bb said:

?
Literally all US strategies around technical evolution revolve in one way or another around ways how to keep ability to hit mainland, and not let China push the fight away.

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AndrewS said:

Prior to Patchwork's departure, he did discuss how the US couldn't generate sufficient salvo sizes to get through the IADS on mainland China. Plus look at how many aimpoints there are and the sheer number of airbases for example.

Given this situation, is it even worth doing?

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Pretty much this yeah. Not just from patch, I think at least one of the CSIS reports as well.

Mind you, like you say, US is not happy about this, and they're making basic steps to change the status quo. But their rate of increasing offensive is markedly slower than China's increasing defense.

As of 2024, the realistic US strategy does not involve any attacks on the mainland, aside from very symbolic attacks on maybe the most outlying airbases. Their plans all revolve around attacking Chinese ships as they're traveling around Taiwan and in the far seas. Then somehow this will eventually lead to China to surrender Taiwan to US.

One can certainly have opinions on whether such a daft attack plan has any chance of succeeding, or if it's just political posturing at home.

HighGround said:

I don't see how it's realistically possible, in any meaningful quantity anyway.

The best China can hope for, I think, is to push United States back to their side of the Pacific.

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US has like 100x less shipbuilding capacity than Japan and SK. Japan and SK produce all of US' semiconductors that they don't import from China. China doesn't need to burn down/invade continental US, because continental US isn't US empire's most productive provinces (at least per capita). SK and Japan are. To fatally weaken US before an island hopping campaign, it's only needed to capture US' Asia provinces.

In many ways, the upcoming war will mirror the first Sino Japanese war, but with the declining empire as US and the rising empire as China. In both wars, the declining power is sitting on vast colonies that it perhaps cannot effectively defend, while the rising power has spent decades rapidly improving itself, but lacks colonies of it's own. Both wars mark the debut of the rising power giving up it's isolation.

And in both conflicts, the outcome was not crystal clear. At least on paper, the reigning empire had more numerous forces, while the rising empire's forces were smaller, but more modernized and streamlined.

Biscuits said:

Taiwan is just a trigger point for a greater Asia conflict. China will never stop at Taiwan if US empire invades, that would be like USSR stopping after reclaiming Moscowien and Ukraine from the Germans.

US is only able to claim Taiwan due to inheriting the claim from Imperial Japan. So the end of the war must be in Tokyo. The empire of the western world must be expelled from all Asian colonies they stole from China and those territories returned. That will not trigger a nuclear conflict, as US has lost no core territories.

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If the US is truly Nazi Germany and China the USSR, it wouldn't work to stop at Tokyo, the PLA would need to march into Washington. That's just not feasible in the near future. I'll admit a PLAGF campaign on Japanese soil sounds like it would be incredibly interesting to hypothesize about though.

If China does reach a technological development level of its nuclear forces like you describe in the rest of your post, I think the US wouldn't even intervene to begin with. But if the US fights at all it is probably going to fight to the end. It doesn't have nukes and talk about extended deterrence for no reason.

AndrewS said:

But what is the US military supposed to do? They know that if mainland China is a secure operating location, then the US will lose in the Western Pacific.

In 2030, based on existing and expected procurement rates, my guess China will be able to obtain air superiority over Japan and whatever support the US can provide.

In 2035, assuming China retains its lead in 6th gen fighter development, we're looking at Chinese air superiority extending 3000km to Guam and the rest of the 2IC.

So in order to have even a slender hope of winning, the US has to plan on hitting airbases in mainland China.

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Prior to Patchwork's departure, he did discuss how the US couldn't generate sufficient salvo sizes to get through the IADS on mainland China. Plus look at how many aimpoints there are and the sheer number of airbases for example.

Given this situation, is it even worth doing?

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The topic may be escaping the scope of "PLA strategy in a Taiwan contingency," but in my opinion, this is what a lot of the rhetoric we see from the US about nuclear testing, SLCM-N, and abandoning New START is about.

The US faced the possibility of direct war with China three times prior to the normalization of relations: 1950-1953 throughout the Korean War, 1958 during the Second TWS Crisis, and 1969 when the US considered invading North Vietnam. In all instances, the JCS and DOD analysts admitted the US could not defeat China without using nuclear weapons. This reality, together with the political cost of using nukes (public opposition against their use during the 2nd TWS Crisis was high), forced the US to back down.

Whether due to cognitive biases, institutional rot, or whatever, much of the US government seems to think increasing the arsenal will be the only way to prevent conflict with China or "prevail" in conflict against China. Even the Biden administration, which initially desired to walk back from the hostile rhetoric of the Trump admin and salvage New START prior to 2-24-22, folded on SLCM-N.

Almond98 said:

Have they ever thought this could lead to a nuclear war even if it is tactical nuclear weapon? Clearly russia will also get involved if they use this on china.

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There is strong pressure from, of all places, the Japanese government to ignore these possibilities and continue to rely on nuclear weapons for defense in Asia.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, there was much discussion in US circles about whether to openly admit that the US was vulnerable to Chinese nukes in the same way it is widely understood that any conflict between Russia and NATO would escalate into full scale nuclear war. The Japanese government protested these discussions, as they feared admitting US vulnerability would increase the likelihood of a limited conflict over the Diaoyu Islands. This situation is known as the stability-instability paradox.

Since then the US has not discussed much about what nuclear weapons use against China would entail, at least not publicly. Considering a lot of US politicians and analysts live in a fantasy world where the J-20 is an F-22 copy and the US will build thousands of destroyers to blockade China for years on end, it may be unlikely we will see realistic assessments of the nuclear aspect of a US intervention in Taiwan for some time.

Also concerning is the tendency of hawks to downplay nuclear issues. The amount of people who still to this day push for greater US-NATO involvement in Ukraine because "Russian nukes don't work" is absurd and disturbing. An even greater number of these types of people would probably arise in the event of armed reunification.

Biscuits said:

Pretty much this yeah. Not just from patch, I think at least one of the CSIS reports as well.

Mind you, like you say, US is not happy about this, and they're making basic steps to change the status quo. But their rate of increasing offensive is markedly slower than China's increasing defense.

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I think it's more accurate to say that Chinese offensive capabilities are increasing far faster.
This is upending US calculations that it can operate its offensive forces from the 1IC and then the 2IC.

Biscuits said:

As of 2024, the realistic US strategy does not involve any attacks on the mainland, aside from very symbolic attacks on maybe the most outlying airbases. Their plans all revolve around attacking Chinese ships as they're traveling around Taiwan and in the far seas. Then somehow this will eventually lead to China to surrender Taiwan to US.

One can certainly have opinions on whether such a daft attack plan has any chance of succeeding, or if it's just political posturing at home.

US has like 100x less shipbuilding capacity than Japan and SK. Japan and SK produce all of US' semiconductors that they don't import from China. China doesn't need to burn down/invade continental US, because continental US isn't US empire's most productive provinces (at least per capita). SK and Japan are. To fatally weaken US before an island hopping campaign, it's only needed to capture US' Asia provinces.

In many ways, the upcoming war will mirror the first Sino Japanese war, but with the declining empire as US and the rising empire as China. In both wars, the declining power is sitting on vast colonies that it perhaps cannot effectively defend, while the rising power has spent decades rapidly improving itself, but lacks colonies of it's own. Both wars mark the debut of the rising power giving up it's isolation.

And in both conflicts, the outcome was not crystal clear. At least on paper, the reigning empire had more numerous forces, while the rising empire's forces were smaller, but more modernized and streamlined.

Click to expand...

I don't see a war as inevitable.

AndrewS said:

I think it's more accurate to say that Chinese offensive capabilities are increasing far faster.
This is upending US calculations that it can operate its offensive forces from the 1IC and then the 2IC.

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It's both offensive and defensive. China is adding what, maybe 1-3 Israels worth of GBAD every year?

AndrewS said:

I don't see a war as inevitable.

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On the basic level, China is a peaceful country, but constant US threats wear at the people and leadership's minds.

Imho Imperial Japan also started out as more neutral than most people think (although the stain of barbarism was never fully removed), they only turned very expansionist when China and the west told them they couldn't have any territories or resources outside of the home islands.

Today, China isn't isolated in the same way or is forced to expand for resources, but rather they face a pressure to expand to deny US' from resources, because US is intractably hostile and always seeking to sabotage China across the globe.

Direct war isn't inevitable, it is just very likely. If there is peaceful surrender by the KMT on Taiwan and negotiated USexit in Asian colonies, a resolution to the US-China conflict can happen without any high end weapons clashing on either side.

HighGround said:

I don't see how it's realistically possible, in any meaningful quantity anyway.

The best China can hope for, I think, is to push United States back to their side of the Pacific.

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you are believing, just because a random dude from United states said so ..

i respect his opinion but the man barely know anything about China.

XXX number of warheads, next gen ICBM/HGV , expansion of fast breed reactor, new design warhead and so many other things like number of SSNs launch in last 3 years.. the basic information is available on this forum. even this available information is represent very small portion of what is actual behind the door.

i don't think so we need to talk about Airforce and other stuffs.. everybody knows..

AndrewS said:

Given this situation, is it even worth doing?

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Like, I didn't follow him carefully, at best it's a strange claim.

Salvo equations are simply inapplicable to strategic bombing in any form, they describe a different situation.

China is a huge country, more or less surrounded by US staging areas/vulnerable borders.

Not only it's worth doing, it's literally the only direct military way to do anything with Chinese mammoth industrial capability. Otherwise it's a fair industrial fight(maritime domain is an industrial fight) against world's leading industrial power.
It isn't winnable.

Gloire_bb said:

Like, I didn't follow him carefully, at best it's a strange claim.

Salvo equations are simply inapplicable to strategic bombing in any form, they describe a different situation.

China is a huge country, more or less surrounded by US staging areas/vulnerable borders.

Not only it's worth doing, it's literally the only direct military way to do anything with Chinese mammoth industrial capability. Otherwise it's a fair industrial fight(maritime domain is an industrial fight) against world's leading industrial power.
It isn't winnable.

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Even if the US wanted to it can’t in its current state. That’s the point of the salvos math. The US depends on its aircraft carriers for offensive volume but to do that the US would need to be able to get within range of China’s coast and *then* deplete China’s IADS enough to start hitting targets at a high enough tempo to sustain attrition against regeneration, while minimizing its own attrition or maintaining its own regeneration fast enough against counterattack to persist. Even the first step, getting to China’s coast, is not possible if they don’t have enough defensive missiles to beat China’s offensive salvos. And even if they could get to the coast they would need to be able to *sustain* defensive missile stock at a constant clip to survive in that position for any meaningful length of time. Hence salvos math.

montyp165 said:

Chinese industrial strength would enable direct strikes on the continental US if the US were to attack mainland China on top of sustaining pressure on US frontline units, so strategic attrition in this case would work precisely against the US position here.

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You and I have had this discussion before, and you've made the same point in the past but without actually describing how this could occur.

Currently, for the PRC to actually be able to leverage its industry to be able to be utilized to "enable direct strikes on the continental US" it would require two scenarios:
1. Either for the PRC to be able to produce conventional intercontinental ICBM/HGV ranged weapons at a scale which dwarfs US capability to produce in theater conventional strike systems (everything from stealth bombers/fighters with PGMs and ALCMs, to ship and sub launched cruise missiles, and surface launched in theater HGVs and IRBMs etc), or...

2. The PRC would have to literally defeat the US decisively in a westpac conflict in a manner where they can then progressively fight an even longer more drawn out war, all the way across the central pacific and occupy every island and feature in a manner to attain secure lines of supply and reinforcement, all while possessing growing expeditionary/long range forces to gradually bring to bear large scale conventional strike systems of its own against the continental US (which would likely require them to at minimum occupy Hawaii, possibly Alaska, and even other parts of the rest North and South America) by taking bases from which they can deploy air and naval forces from.


Needless to say, neither of those things are capabilities that the Chinese industry or military are going to achieve in the near future, so really the whole discussion about Chinese industrial strength really should not be spoken about in this context.

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latenlazy said:

Even if the US wanted to it can’t in its current state. That’s the point of the salvos math. The US depends on its aircraft carriers for offensive volume but to do that the US would need to be able to get within range of China’s coast and *then* deplete China’s IADS enough to start hitting targets at a high enough tempo to sustain attrition against regeneration, while minimizing its own attrition or maintaining its own regeneration fast enough against counterattack to persist. Even the first step, getting to China’s coast, is not possible if they don’t have enough defensive missiles to beat China’s offensive salvos. And even if they could get to the coast they would need to be able to *sustain* defensive missile stock at a constant clip to survive in that position for any meaningful length of time. Hence salvos math.

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IMO the best way to approach the question of applying Chinese industrial capabilities is what the conditions are for them to operate relatively unmolested.

Even with salvo math, the issue is what will the conflict look like after the initial stage of conflict is concluded -- and what does the capability of each side to regenerate forces and fires and sustain their staging positions look like.

Imo the "strength" of Chinese industry after a war has commenced, is most truly relevant if the PRC is capable of decisively winning the opening stages of a westpac conflict where the outcome is they possess a balance of forces that they have the confidence and ability to safely carry out comprehensive strategic offensive operations into the central pacific.
That capability/posture in turn would offer them both time and space to activate their industrial capability to safely churn out new platforms without significant disruption to said industry from standoff US fires.
And once that is achieved, perhaps one can start to think about what the nature of any PLA strategic offensive follow ups may look like.

However, the "difficult part" of the above scenario is "decisively winning the opening stages of a westpac conflict where the outcome is they possess a balance of forces that they have the confidence and ability to safely carry out comprehensive strategic offensive operations into the central pacific."

Gloire_bb said:

Like, I didn't follow him carefully, at best it's a strange claim.

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It boils down to how many missiles could the US realistically launch in a single salvo?

Let's say the US launches a massive airstrike from 3 carriers or 3 airbases.
So call it 75 fighters with 2 JASSMs each, plus another 75 fighters for air cover.

That's only 150 incoming missiles.

In the Shanghai region, I see 10+ airbases. If they scramble just 50 fighters, that's over 300 AAMs, just to shoot down 150 missiles. Then you've got the ground-based air defences.

Gloire_bb said:

Salvo equations are simply inapplicable to strategic bombing in any form, they describe a different situation.

China is a huge country, more or less surrounded by US staging areas/vulnerable borders.

Click to expand...

The point is all those potential US staging areas in the 1IC are vulnerable.
In 2030, imagine all 10 Japanese fighter bases being under constant attack and Japan itself under blockade.

So realistically, the US can't deploy or sustain a large concentration of aircraft in the 1IC.

Of course, this depends on Japan being stupid enough to declare war on China.

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As for the 2IC, it comprises a handful of potential bases and because of the distance, you need large supporting aircraft like tankers, transports and AWACs. But those large aircraft are expensive and are very vulnerable on the ground because you can't hide them

Gloire_bb said:

Not only it's worth doing, it's literally the only direct military way to do anything with Chinese mammoth industrial capability. Otherwise it's a fair industrial fight(maritime domain is an industrial fight) against world's leading industrial power.
It isn't winnable.

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As I said, the US is clinging to a "slender thread of hope"

In the industrial realm, you can summarise it as follows:

232x difference in Shipbuilding capacity (US Navy presentation)
4x difference in weapons development speed (USAF procurement presentation)
20x difference in hypersonic missile cost (USAF procurement presentation)

Gloire_bb said:

Like, I didn't follow him carefully, at best it's a strange claim.

Salvo equations are simply inapplicable to strategic bombing in any form, they describe a different situation.

China is a huge country, more or less surrounded by US staging areas/vulnerable borders.

Click to expand...

No? US only has staging areas on one side, China is a geographical fortress, being shaped like a semicircle with mountains overlooking the ocean.

Gloire_bb said:

Not only it's worth doing, it's literally the only direct military way to do anything with Chinese mammoth industrial capability.

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But it won't do anything with China's industrial capability because not enough missiles will get through and platforms run an inherently high risk of being destroyed on the approach to the mainland. Pilots will die and missile stocks will be used up for no gains.

At least if pilots fly on PLAN ships and Chinese maritime shipping, they run less risk and might be able to hit something without expanding multiple operation true promise worth of missiles.

Gloire_bb said:

Otherwise it's a fair industrial fight(maritime domain is an industrial fight) against world's leading industrial power.
It isn't winnable.

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I guess Yamamoto was already in the business of telling people similar things in the 1930s.

The crux is that US politicians wants to expand, and it is in denial about how feasible such operations would be. Their military are forced to obey the war mongering politicians.

The plan presented by the US military to their leaders is likely this: if the PLAN is sufficiently degraded in the first weeks through a decisive battle and US marines rapidly seize SCS islands or even Taiwan province, China will not have the willpower to fight on.