Are there raw numbers that suggest that China has more AD battalions than the US or Russia?
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
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When considering air defense, we also need to consider the experience of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Multi-wave and multi-gradient attacks composed of cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles, and suicide drones put great pressure on the air defense system, and the impact of such air strikes on equipment and morale is obvious. The PLA introduced the Harpy drone decades ago as one of its weapons to suppress Taiwan’s air defense system. Today, suicide drones are much cheaper than before, the PLA will undoubtedly use them in large numbers. For example, suicide drones equipped with anti-radiation seekers and simple guided system can be launched in a mixed formation to attack fixed targets while hunting down air defense radars that intercept missiles or drones. But, the low cost and low launch requirements of drones also mean that ROC armed forces can also produce them locally and launch them covertly. ROC armed forces can retain a certain retaliatory capability, forcing the PLA to divert resources for air defense & counter attack
In this scenario, the advantages that the PLA has are 1. Undoubtedly huge drone production capacity, whether it is chips, fuselage materials, or engines, are very sufficient. In fact, the only thing that may cause a production capacity bottleneck is explosives. 2. Both active troops and militias still retain a large number of AA guns, which are very useful for anti-drone operations.
In this scenario, the advantages that the PLA has are 1. Undoubtedly huge drone production capacity, whether it is chips, fuselage materials, or engines, are very sufficient. In fact, the only thing that may cause a production capacity bottleneck is explosives. 2. Both active troops and militias still retain a large number of AA guns, which are very useful for anti-drone operations.
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manqiangrexue
Brigadier
I don't know why you're putting those 2 together. The former, Taiwan already does; there are a handful of small nations in the world that recognize the ROC instead of the PRC. The latter, if it does, triggers war.
Not really. I said that Taiwan has done many things to serve its own position including weapons acquisitions and attempting to forge international alliances but those are not regarded as harshly as a declaration of independence according to the CCP's words.
The CCP answered that question with a yes. And how complex that operation is is quite questionable. If the US is too scared to move, it'll be a walk in the park.
I don't know what you are talking about. I never said that China should pre-emptively attack any nation.
I don't understand where that comparison came from. I said that as long as China is strong enough, American lackies will be too scared to try to intervene in a Taiwan invasion, even if their citizens show moral outrage at China. I never said they wouldn't do anything if pre-emptively attacked.
Typical desert camo won't fool IR and SAR sensors. As for highways, I suspect many of not most of Taiwan's highways would be clear during a Chinese invasion; nobody's going to drive on a road that could get bombed at any moment. China's SAM coverage over Taiwan is pretty good but not complete and is inevitably going to be limited by physics, i.e. the curvature of the earth; low-flying Taiwanese fighters are not going to be detected. I suppose it's possible that PLAAF AEW&C aircraft could help mitigate this problem but I don't think we know to what extent these aircraft are network-integrated with ground SAM sites (as opposed to fighters/MPAs, their usual conversation partners). No doubt China has mapped out every building and garage in Taiwan already, but real time intel on mobile targets is a different set of challenges. In the end, I don't think we're going to get much further on this issue as we really know very little of China's intel capabilities over Taiwan during an actual conflict. I think we can safely assume it's "large" and "growing fast", but beyond that is a black hole.
Oh, I didn't know I had to rebut this at all. the PLARF and the PLAAF will absolutely do the heavy lifting in the first few days of an invasion. The PLARF will go first, knocking out as many hangars, air strips, SAM sites, and C&C nodes as it can find and has the ammo to spare, followed by the PLAAF performing SEAD and air superiority missions on what's left of the Taiwanese anti-air defenses. The PLARF's missile barrages would not be anything the USN could or would do anything about.
Artillery strikes, fighter strikes, and drone/helo strikes may only take hours to level a port, but it would take weeks to level the surrounding city, especially large port cities, any part of which could and would be hosting defensive forces. Just remember it only takes one grunt with a Javelin firing out of a window to wreck a transport full of tanks and troops or wreck the back of a ro-ro where the ramp is. You're not just going to have to hunt down tanks, IFVs, and SAM units hiding amongst the buildings, you're going to have to level entire swathes of buildings Russia-vs-Ukraine style. Not only that, defenses would also be placed outside of the city but located within the units' firing range on the city and/or the port facilities. So it's not the just city itself you'd have to pacify, but the surrounding areas as well.
The carrier's escorts are invariably going to be arrayed around the carrier so there will be at least one and probably multiple shooters available to attack an inbound HGV.
The carrier itself has no kinetic defenses against an HGV, only EW and aggressive maneuvering. ESSM, RAM, and CIWS have essentially zero chance against an HGV.
That number is unknown. And BTW, the US would not ever come fight China with only one carrier. They would arrive with as many as they could bring at once, which means probably 4-6 CSGs in the initial phases of the war, and after that, whatever the Pacific theater could be made to support over time.
Not necessarily. You are assuming the HGV payload is a direct hit munition, whereas it could easily also be an AOE-based payload to increase hit probability, like fragmentation or cluster munitions. That kind of hit will stop flight deck ops for hours to days, but will be unlikely to result in a kill.
I trust the words coming out of that guy's mouth as far as I can throw him. Politicians say things based on intended effect, not necessarily on facts; there are any number of reasons including especially hyping the China Threat for him to say wargames say China wins. The Pentagon games may or may not show a Chinese victory; we won't ever actually know the results, unlike think tank-based games which are actually published. Even then depending on the think tank the results may not be entirely trustworthy either.
I'm sure China has or is building the amount of missiles (I suppose you mean longer range strategic missiles like DF-16, CJ-10/20 and the like) it thinks it needs to get the job done. Whether it has achieved or will achieve those goals in time for its projected date of AR, who knows. The problem of course is cost; the Chinese military does actually have a limited budget, and missiles get a cut, of which it's not entirely clear is sufficient for the PLARF's perceived deployment goals.
A savage ending indeed, but also the most expedient. In any case, I don't think anybody in the public sphere really knows where they are on the spectrum of ease of victory; I mean you only differ by a few years from my position to begin with, and we're both just guessing anyway.
You can't just wave your hands in the air and say "Muh loTz RaDArz" as if that were a magic shield against stealth aircraft designed for broadband stealth. Air search radars operating in the lower bands (VHF, UHF, L) will still have a difficult time against B-2s and B-21s (i.e. significantly reduced detection ranges vs B-2s/B-21s) because of this, unlike F-22s and F-35s which being optimized against higher band radars WILL actually have lots of problems penetrating China's air defense network. The fact that China has been researching ALOT of various nontraditional detection techniques to detect large flying wing stealth aircraft designs is a definitive indication that traditional detection techniques are viewed as inadequate to the task. These techniques include quantum sensors, even lower band long-wave (HF) OTH radars, and passive detection systems. You should note, BTW, that the same problems experienced by the Chinese side vs B-2s and B-21s will the be same exact problems experienced by the US side vs the H-20, which no doubt is one of the reasons the PLAAF has kept the development of the H-20 going despite the advent of the J-36 and the J-50.
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A Javelin or any other ATGM doesn't do anything against ships. It'll create a small hole above the waterline at best.
There's a reason anti ship missiles are on the order of 500 kg warhead mass and not 1 kg warhead mass.
@latenlazy
Don't create a straw man and then beat it down. I specifically said "transports", i.e. smaller craft like LCMs and hovercraft. And for ro-ros I said the back of the ship where the loading ramp is.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
That would mean that the highways are very clear and easy for search, wouldn't it? You were comparing a sparce but large area to a densely packed small area. If Taiwan's highways are clear, then we are now talking about a sparce small area.
Once rocket forces hit every known target, Chinese fighters and armed drones will be patrolling from above. The jets won't even get off the ground and those that do will be immediately targetted by PLAAF with a heavy look down shoot down advantage. Taiwan is a very very small place; the farthest point from the mainland is some 200 miles. Curvature of the earth is 8 inches per mile, 41 meters at the farthest point, 200 miles away. How low do you think ROC fighters can operate to avoid Chinese SAMs?
But you were comparing clearance time for US on Iraq vs China on Taiwan lsland so the heavy heavy advantages that come with the PLARF being able to use ground artillery without the need to transport abroad needs to be calculated heavily to China's favour in reducing time.
If they wanted to actually level a city, it would make things much easier. PLARF won't take long at all if it's a carpet-bombing operation. The initial strikes are well-established between us that it would cripple the defenses present but our debate seems to be whether the PLA can host enough active suppression to prevent sneak attacks and resurgent forces from emerging. I say that with constant satellite surveillance, fighter coverage, armed drone coverage, AND the increasing amount of ground forces pouring into the island, the PLA can achieve enough suppression so that the ROC can never pull surprise forces into the area to sabotage a landing.
Yeah, but the missile is inbound to the carrier, not these escorts so they are going to have to chase/predict/intercept it rather than waiting for it to come to them. And I think it will be relatively easy for the PLARF to fire enough missiles to overwhelm these defenders especially since the complexity of intercepting HGVs means it likely takes multiple interceptors to even have a good chance to target one missile.
Great. Aggressive maneuvering is really not that aggressive. It's a 100,000 ton ship that moves at 35mph in straight line speed.
Absolutely. I never thought about 1 carrier. Hegseth neither; he said the US would lose all of its carriers (in Asia, I assume) in 15 minutes. Using more carriers to defeat Chinese missile numbers is a very poor proposition.
I think I've heard multiple times that these are 1 hit done munitions. At the very least, they are not here to just pepper a flight deck; they would at least do so much damage that the hobbled carrier would retreat rather than be killed off in battle with most of its systems not working.
The guy's known to have a big mouth, blab things in public he shouldn't and he has all access to classified information.
And it's going to be building them with a huge margin of error. Every military budget is limited; that's not really an argument. But you'll never get a better combo than China's military budget, the near guarantee that it's opaque and can scale up by need, China's building power, and its no-nonsense efficiency.
OK
The guy is talking about using Javelins to shoot at LCM after Taiwan has already lost area control of its ports and beaches what do you want me to do *shrug*. Literally a waste of time trying to have an intelligent conversation with this level of incoherence, especially when he’s clearly shown he’s more interested in writing fantasy cope and puffing his fragile ego whenever someone points out its flimsy BS than engaging in informed conversation.
(Look he’s going to see this and start sniveling at me again like a scared chihuahua, and this is the most value you’ll get out of him as a participant in this forum).
So yes. In the short run, expect more U.S. commitments to the defence of Taiwan. During this period, Washington would likely try its best to move more TSMC assets to Arizona, whilst compelling Taiwan to purchase more HIMARs, ASCMs, fighter planes, SAMs, etc. Also expect the PLA to conduct more missile flight overs, possibly even including full range flight tests of ICBMs over Taiwan.
You've already got a dense, overlapping air defence network across all of Eastern China.
Possibly the densest in the world?
In comparison:
1. In a contest with NATO, the Russian Air Force would struggle to control the airspace above Russia, so large numbers of SAMs makes sense for air denial
2. Historically, the USAF dominated the skies. So it would be expected that they have the fewest SAM systems
But remember that in the coming years, Chinese military power will continue projecting out into the Pacific given:
1. how China is matching or exceeding USAF procurement of comparable aircraft
2. annual Chinese warship procurement is approaching 2x the US rate, roughly speaking
Given time, this means that the Chinese Navy and Air Force will become larger than the US equivalent
So the Chinese military can aim for air superiority over the First Island Chain, and then to the Second Island Chain.
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So does China actually require additional long-range SAM units?
Where will large numbers of incoming missiles or aircraft be coming from?
In the future, if China can control the Western Pacific, then China arguably would have too many SAM units.
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