Not a bad showing yesterday.
TW soldiers arrested for spying- 3 worked for the Presidential Office.
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
Not a bad showing yesterday.
TW soldiers arrested for spying- 3 worked for the Presidential Office.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Would China's FM-3000N be much more useful against the USN?
I’ve heard similar issues for the Chinese side. It seems the 5-5-5 missile is basically sidelined, which is why we haven’t heard much about it. Think a big part of the problem is the more challenging EM environment. For the US side having to deal with more energetic threats don’t help either. More capacity for ECM and more powerful seekers seem to be the direction naval missiles of all sorts are headed toward.
Just remember Desert Storm, the closest nearest thing we have to a modern equivalent; even the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was almost a nothingburger compared to forces arrayed against the Iraqi military in 1991. The USAF and USN spent FIVE weeks decimating the Iraqi defenses during the initial air and missile campaign, destroying mostly only air defenses like fighters and SAMs, before the ground troops went in. Taiwan is smaller than Iraq, but it certainly wouldn't take only a few hours.
I think the ground forces still would be needed, and not just the amphibious forces. Achieving air superiority is one thing, and is possible to achieve relatively rapidly for the Chinese military, but gaining control of the ground will not be as easy, not unless the Taiwanese leadership capitulates after the decimation of their air defenses, which is somewhat of a possibility IMO, especially if they feel that the US is going to stay out of the fight. Air superiority gives you the advantage in a war, but not the victory. Planes by themselves cannot totally destroy ground forces. Even the US military could not accomplish that against Iraq.
No, those are impact speeds, not necessarily the speeds at which the warheads can start to be engaged by THAAD and SM-6, because they START the terminal phase at Mach 25; at least the ICBM-range warheads do.
True, but then again we are not sure how "not sure" either China or the US really are. Maybe they know much more about the capabilities of various Chinese hypersonics than we do, so this question is still an empty black hole of knowledge as far as our fan side of the knowledge base is concerned.
China has to divide its missile forces between suppressing US bases and attacking US ships, which even for the massive production capacity of the Chinese military, is IMO a tall order. I suspect the lion's share by far will be suppressing US bases, as each base will require constant attack and reattack to keep those runways, hangars, and piers full of holes and not let them get repaired enough for use; and of course that will be in the face of THAADs, SM-6s, Patriots, and other SAMs trying to shoot down these missiles on top of that. How many missiles are left to dive down on Burkes and Constellations, I don't really know, but it may end up being a matter of saving them for larger HVA ships like carriers and LHDs, if any are available.
Ready to take Taiwan with or without US/Japanese military intervention. If China does not feel ready to take Taiwan with US/Japanese military intervention, it will not attack at all unless forced to do so by circumstances. When China does decide to go in, you can be sure that the Chinese military has done the math and come to the conclusion that it is likely to win regardless of what the US decides to do.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Iraq is over 12x larger than Taiwan. American forces weren't operating in a rush, and they were not operating close to home. Chinese forces know they are in a big rush to do heavy damage to a very small place that is 100 miles away from Chinese shores. Also, the people in Taiwan are Chinese; they are pragmatic. Most of them have stated they would surrender. They are not Muslim jihadists who believe that death in battle means 72 virgins in heaven.
Planes can easily keep landing beaches clean. Fighter jets to suppress aerial threats (that haven't been detroyed by missiles) and helicopters and drones to suppress ground threats. This would allow any type of ship to land massive numbers of troops. When push comes to shove, if ship availability supercedes the transport of PLA to Xiamen, even hords of young male civilians can be transported over to begin colonization of the island.
So... what speeds and altitude are THAAD and SM6 known to intercept? It seems it's definitely not going to be mach 25 or else it'd be a midcourse interceptor and wouldn't have to wait for the missile to slow down in terminal phase.
China can easily simulate ships in the desert to test the accuracy of its ASBMs and it has conventional missile interceptors to understand what kind of evasive maneuvers are likely to be effective. America does not have anything like a Chinese HGV/ASBM to test its interceptors on. And we are going to come back to the fundamental difference in difficulty between targetting a ship-sized object moving at 35mph and a missile-sized object moving at mach 9. How many times can the PLARF afford to make a mistake targetting a carrier while adjusting its strategy to hit it? A lot, depending on the stockpile and the engagement distance/missile range. How many times can the carrier afford to make a mistake defending itself? 0. Those should give clues on how sure each side is.
That's about production capacity. That's China's super forte. Nobody has numbers but China's most difficult endeavour here is creating technologies to defeat the USN. The easiest part is manufacturing a ton of it so that it is double triple sure it doesn't run out of ammo.
Taking Taiwan with/without US/Japanese intervention very different depending on how much much damage you are willing to do and to take. China might be ready to take Taiwan while attacking it viciously and taking a ton of damage back from the USN... but does it want to do that? Can it work towards taking Taiwan with surgical strikes that do minimal collateral damage to the civilian population? Can it take on the USN in a way such that the vast majority of the damage is taken by the USN, forcing them to retreat while the PLAN sits there looking pretty? It's very possible, even probable, that the PLA is already confident in taking Taiwan all things damned, but it is simply working towards doing so with minimal risk, damage, and collateral damage.
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Taiwan is a province of China under international law, US/JAP military intervention means directly invade to China. I can surely tell you that means heavy casualties because the war between China and US will be uncontrollable at that time and also the the collapse of the international order since WWII.
It is easy to begin a war but hard to end it. Before US has any good idea about how to end the war decently, i don't think they want to intervene that.
It is easy to begin a war but hard to end it. Before US has any good idea about how to end the war decently, i don't think they want to intervene that.
lcloo
Captain
US's biggest fear is losing World Dominance. As already shown in US-China trade war, Chip War, AI war etc. US took the initiative to start the non-blood wars because of fear of losing dominance.
The worst worry of US is if they intervent and lose the war, their global dominance will go down to the drains. If China win the AR, Japan and South Korea will have no choice but to seek a peace treaty with China, effectively kicking US out of the region. And the domino effect will travel in waves through out the globe.
Thus the decision of whether or not to intervent in Taiwan AR has been a large headache for US. A way out is to recognise the AR is the ending phase of the Chinese Civil war, an internal affair of China, thus a big excuse not to intervent in the hot war.
China's worry is not whether they can defeat US or not. They fought against US before and they will fight again if necessary. The biggest thing in mind would be if US intervent and losed, would they lose their sense and rationality and start a nuclear war which there is no winner no matter how you look at it.
Thus we can see that China has not been in hurry to retake Taiwan since the Korean war which derailed Mainland's plan to land on Taiwan in 1950s. The "Made in China 2025" has achieved much of China's development plans, especially in military. Once China has become a true peer of US + its allies, with strong nuclear deterance, the days of AR would be near.
Strong nuclear deterance from China would be a major factor to turn the thinking of US president and senators that US can win a nuclear war. We can see this in Ukraine war when Russian shows their nuclear card to prevent direct intervention of NATO.
The worst worry of US is if they intervent and lose the war, their global dominance will go down to the drains. If China win the AR, Japan and South Korea will have no choice but to seek a peace treaty with China, effectively kicking US out of the region. And the domino effect will travel in waves through out the globe.
Thus the decision of whether or not to intervent in Taiwan AR has been a large headache for US. A way out is to recognise the AR is the ending phase of the Chinese Civil war, an internal affair of China, thus a big excuse not to intervent in the hot war.
China's worry is not whether they can defeat US or not. They fought against US before and they will fight again if necessary. The biggest thing in mind would be if US intervent and losed, would they lose their sense and rationality and start a nuclear war which there is no winner no matter how you look at it.
Thus we can see that China has not been in hurry to retake Taiwan since the Korean war which derailed Mainland's plan to land on Taiwan in 1950s. The "Made in China 2025" has achieved much of China's development plans, especially in military. Once China has become a true peer of US + its allies, with strong nuclear deterance, the days of AR would be near.
Strong nuclear deterance from China would be a major factor to turn the thinking of US president and senators that US can win a nuclear war. We can see this in Ukraine war when Russian shows their nuclear card to prevent direct intervention of NATO.
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What you're describing is essentially a de facto independent nation. The only roadblock for Taiwan isn't the lack of a "declaration" but that of international recognition. Taiwan making a verbal declaration doesn't change the situation one bit unless the island takes concrete steps in that direction (i.e. making formal alliances with other countries, etc.), so I doubt China would really mind whether or not a Taiwanese politician decides to go in front of a podium and make a symbolic but meaningless declaration.
Optics are hugely important as it pertains to the potential scope and likelihood of foreign intervention. China taking a reactive stance would yield vastly different results than if she were to proactively start military operations. Western democracies are acutely cognizant of their citizens' opinions and stances on the conflicts that they undertake; if a significant portion of their population opposes involvement in a conflict, it would be extremely difficult for their governments to continue their military operations lest they be prosecuted or voted out of office. On the other hand, if their populations perceive that it is China who is instigating conflict and threatening their daily lives, it would be nigh impossible for these nations to stay out of a conflict. This could have dramatic effects on the likelihood of Western military intervention and also the duration and intensity of the said intervention.
China will likely respond to Taiwan's actions, not political verbiage (including "declarations" of independence). If Taiwan declares independence but its political & economic situation remains unchanged, China might just do political saber rattling instead of resorting to military action. On the other hand, if Taiwan instigates a dramatic shift in the balance of power in the region (e.g. by allowing the deployment of US offensive weaponry on Taiwan or developing WMDs) - even without declaring independence - China would respond much more forcefully.
China seems to realize the economic and military dangers of armed reunification and its own tabloids seem to shy away from the explicit mention of military intervention.
You are clueless of the popular opinions in China. The frogs on the Taiwan Island are making things worsts for themselves everyday. You shouldn’t talk about something you know nothing about.
Popular opinions rarely translate to official policy, do they? When public opinion favored military intervention when Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022, the Chinese government had to put out op-eds on their state-run papers to tone down the militaristic fervor.