PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

latenlazy

Brigadier
I think you can compare the size of a LCM or hovercraft to a tank.
He really can’t lmao. Remember the guy’s ability to do math got fried when he got asked to count the total salvos of the PLARF+PLAN+PLAAF against the USN and not just the PLAN’s. Calling out his cherry picking made him short circuit and he spent the next day foaming at the mouth with crossed up eyes anytime the question got repeated to him. You’re asking for too much.
 

Iron Man

Major
Registered Member
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.
When I was talking about a densely packed urban area, it wasn't just in reference to highways. OTOH highways are numerous in Taiwan to begin with, especially on the west side where the invasion force would presumably land, which doesn't make things much easier when it comes to how much surface area you have to cover. Even if you can rule it out because it's empty, you still have to look at it in the first place.

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?
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.
Just by way of an example, according to Google AI there are 928,000 buildings in Taipei. Presumably there are even more in larger neighboring Taoyuan which is a more likely place for the PLAN to land given its port facilities. If the PLARF even really just has to destroy just a HUNDREDTH of that number that's still 9,280 buildings. No way the PLARF has that many DF-series SRBMs. I'm sure even the combined might of both the PLARF and the PLAAF couldn't take out that many buildings before running out of ammo. This is why you would absolutely HAVE to follow up PLARF/PLAAF attacks with actual boots on the ground.

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.
The PLARF will not be able to use ground artillery, as they do not control any. Unless by that you mean the newer ultra long range rocket artillery systems like the PCH-191 (and maybe the PHL-16), but such systems are only a small minority of PLAA's (not PLARF's) artillery forces and would not be able to "carpet bomb" Taiwanese cities in any significant quantities; these would be used in more precise attacks against specific high value targets.

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.
Escorts have missiles that have hundreds of km of range; they would normally be (roughly evenly) spread out around the carrier a few dozen km out from the carrier (as opposed to what you see in photo ops), or at least spread out around the expected threat axis, so there wouldn't be much maneuvering needed to attack an inbound HGV. What efforts could be made would be to make the shot in line/inbound as much as possible rather than crossing (crossing shots are harder with lower Pk) as much as feasible, but if the escorts are covering the carrier correctly, this is not a huge problem.

Great. Aggressive maneuvering is really not that aggressive. It's a 100,000 ton ship that moves at 35mph in straight line speed.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. It's not easy making course corrections for a heavy object traveling at hypersonic speeds, especially last second corrections. And the carrier would be doing anything except moving predictably in a straight line. BTW, there are plenty of YouTube videos of carriers making flank turns at high speeds; you'd be surprised at how nimble those large ships actually are, thanks to their nuclear reactors. The flight deck would of course turn into utter chaos, but if it's between losing some fighters/crew overboard and taking a hit, I'm sure the captain would choose the former over the latter. BTW, it's kind of an open secret that USN carriers have a top speed that is actually much closer to 40 knots than to 30 knots.

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.
That kind of hyperbole out of him makes it even more likely he either doesn't know what he's talking about, or is hyping up the China Threat even harder. BTW "more" carriers isn't a USN solution to defeating Chinese ballistic missiles. They would be bringing that many carriers for other reasons anyway, like overwhelming strike power.

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.
You're referring to a 'mission kill'. I've not heard anything even remotely authoritative about HGV payloads, and have no reason to believe that the PLARF would automatically rule out using AOE munitions to enhance hit probability. Maybe you can link some articles. BTW, fragmentation and cluster munitions don't have great penetrative capability. What they would do is mainly surface damage to a flight deck by (potentially) setting planes on fire, detonating fuel and munitions, kill people, damage catapults, and damage the island. Whether such munitions are likely to result in a mission kill would depend on the extent of damage to mainly the catapults and the island, and possibly what types and how many fuel tanks and munitions were set off; those explosions could potentially penetrate the armored deck (depending on location) and cause big problems. Planes and people can be replaced, but these things can't. Is one cluster munition-based HGV enough to mission kill a carrier? Maybe. I don't think anyone knows.

The guy's known to have a big mouth, blab things in public he shouldn't and he has all access to classified information.
Most of Trump's picks for cabinet positions are fairly shocking TBH. Like known anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. for Secretary of HHS.

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.
"It's going to be" is the key operative phrase here. I have no doubt that if any country can mass produce and maintain large numbers of large ballistic missiles, it's going to be China. But whether it can produce enough in time for invasion and has the money to produce to levels that the PLARF wants, we don't know.
 

Iron Man

Major
Registered Member
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).
WTF are you even yapping about now? If LCMs and hovercraft are in the process of landing, then Taiwan has NOT in fact lost "area control" of given port city (whatever ass-pulled noobtastic garbage you mean by that, kinda like "defensive launchers" ROFLMAO), because PLAN amphibious forces like LCMs and hovercraft are literally the first waves of landing forces meant to defeat and secure an OPPOSED landing zone; they are the tip of the spear that has to locate and defeat whatever defenses remain after PLARF and PLAAF have had their turns.

You know, you two sorry trolls remind me of that movie Dumb and Dumber, summoning each other to threads like the buttbuddy trolls you both know you are, so that you can tag-team and one-up each other to see how childishly infantile and ignorant you guys can get. I haven't wanted to do this to anyone, but it's clear you and the other D&D turd are not going to stop trolling like immature little churls even after mods warned about this multiple times in multiple threads, and you yourself have even insinuated that you are willing to get a ban as long you drag me down with you, which is obviously what you've been trying to do. What a childish, pathetic little boy. You absolutely deserve a long vacation from SDF, but since troll tolerance seems to be fairly high on SDF, I'm going to just going to have to put your dumb asses on ignore. You two go ahead and continue jerking each other off in your own free time, though. Bye. :D
 

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier
Registered Member
WTF are you even yapping about now? If LCMs and hovercraft are in the process of landing, then Taiwan has NOT in fact lost "area control" of given port city (whatever ass-pulled noobtastic garbage you mean by that, kinda like "defensive launchers" ROFLMAO), because PLAN amphibious forces like LCMs and hovercraft are literally the first waves of landing forces meant to defeat and secure an OPPOSED landing zone; they are the tip of the spear that has to locate and defeat whatever defenses remain after PLARF and PLAAF have had their turns.

You know, you two sorry trolls remind me of that movie Dumb and Dumber, summoning each other to threads like the buttbuddy trolls you both know you are, so that you can tag-team and one-up each other to see how childishly infantile and ignorant you guys can get. I haven't wanted to do this to anyone, but it's clear you and the other D&D turd are not going to stop trolling like immature little churls even after mods warned about this multiple times in multiple threads, and you yourself have even insinuated that you are willing to get a ban as long you drag me down with you, which is obviously what you've been trying to do. What a childish, pathetic little boy. You absolutely deserve a long vacation from SDF, but since troll tolerance seems to be fairly high on SDF, I'm going to just going to have to put your dumb asses on ignore. You two go ahead and continue jerking each other off in your own free time, though. Bye. :D
Damn, long rant and you can't even answer a simple question.
 

latenlazy

Brigadier
WTF are you even yapping about now? If LCMs and hovercraft are in the process of landing, then Taiwan has NOT in fact lost "area control" of given port city (whatever ass-pulled noobtastic garbage you mean by that, kinda like "defensive launchers" ROFLMAO), because PLAN amphibious forces like LCMs and hovercraft are literally the first waves of landing forces meant to defeat and secure an OPPOSED landing zone; they are the tip of the spear that has to locate and defeat whatever defenses remain after PLARF and PLAAF have had their turns.

You know, you two sorry trolls remind me of that movie Dumb and Dumber, summoning each other to threads like the buttbuddy trolls you both know you are, so that you can tag-team and one-up each other to see how childishly infantile and ignorant you guys can get. I haven't wanted to do this to anyone, but it's clear you and the other D&D turd are not going to stop trolling like immature little churls even after mods warned about this multiple times in multiple threads, and you yourself have even insinuated that you are willing to get a ban as long you drag me down with you, which is obviously what you've been trying to do. What a childish, pathetic little boy. You absolutely deserve a long vacation from SDF, but since troll tolerance seems to be fairly high on SDF, I'm going to just going to have to put your dumb asses on ignore. You two go ahead and continue jerking each other off in your own free time, though. Bye. :D
Right on cue lmao. Guys looks like I got this frothy chihuahua trained on a bell. Maybe it’s time to teach him to start doing tricks for his doggy treats :p

Maybe I’ll try to teach him to learn how to read. Iron spam loves to machine gun invectives but seems to have trouble understanding what “after Taiwan has already lost area control of its ports and beaches” means.


Damn, long rant and you can't even answer a simple question.
Dude is practically frothing right now. Worried he might be giving himself brain damage (maybe it’s not our fault).

Also doesn’t seem to realize “why would I do beach landings if I’ve already secured the ports” is a real question ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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manqiangrexue

Brigadier
When I was talking about a densely packed urban area, it wasn't just in reference to highways. OTOH highways are numerous in Taiwan to begin with, especially on the west side where the invasion force would presumably land, which doesn't make things much easier when it comes to how much surface area you have to cover. Even if you can rule it out because it's empty, you still have to look at it in the first place.
To a satellite, it's all how much distance it has to cover vs how much clutter there is to weed out. Taiwan is a small place, next you argued that it's very dense and cluttered, but if you say the highways won't be cluttered, then that makes it a small place with little clutter, hence very easy for satellites and drones to pick up jets on a scan.
Just by way of an example, according to Google AI there are 928,000 buildings in Taipei. Presumably there are even more in larger neighboring Taoyuan which is a more likely place for the PLAN to land given its port facilities. If the PLARF even really just has to destroy just a HUNDREDTH of that number that's still 9,280 buildings. No way the PLARF has that many DF-series SRBMs. I'm sure even the combined might of both the PLARF and the PLAAF couldn't take out that many buildings before running out of ammo. This is why you would absolutely HAVE to follow up PLARF/PLAAF attacks with actual boots on the ground.
I don't understand this. Why would they be trying to level all the buildings? If they wanted to do that, they'd just nuke the place. The whole point has been to take the island with little collateral damage so that it is not a phyrric victory. So they would be targetting military assets, first in a first strike, then continuously to prevent resurgence.
The PLARF will not be able to use ground artillery, as they do not control any. Unless by that you mean the newer ultra long range rocket artillery systems like the PCH-191 (and maybe the PHL-16), but such systems are only a small minority of PLAA's (not PLARF's) artillery forces and would not be able to "carpet bomb" Taiwanese cities in any significant quantities; these would be used in more precise attacks against specific high value targets.
All PLA artillery and missiles regardless of which branch they are controlled by, will be in play.
Escorts have missiles that have hundreds of km of range; they would normally be (roughly evenly) spread out around the carrier a few dozen km out from the carrier (as opposed to what you see in photo ops), or at least spread out around the expected threat axis, so there wouldn't be much maneuvering needed to attack an inbound HGV. What efforts could be made would be to make the shot in line/inbound as much as possible rather than crossing (crossing shots are harder with lower Pk) as much as feasible, but if the escorts are covering the carrier correctly, this is not a huge problem.
Yes, this I know. They need to intercept missiles that are incoming towards the carrier even if they are hundreds of km away. That means they have to chase it. There will be a tons of maneuvering needed as they are very far away and trying to target a ballistic path headed for a significantly different direction from where they are because they are going for the carrier, not the interceptors. And dozens of them can be inbound at once.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. It's not easy making course corrections for a heavy object traveling at hypersonic speeds, especially last second corrections.
Yes, the difference between mach 9 and 35mph means that there's really not much of a correction needed at all from the mach 9 object even if the 35mph object was going nuts.
And the carrier would be doing anything except moving predictably in a straight line.
I said straight line speed of 35mph, meaning that if it was heavily maneuvering, it'd be much slower than that even.
BTW, there are plenty of YouTube videos of carriers making flank turns at high speeds; you'd be surprised at how nimble those large ships actually are, thanks to their nuclear reactors. The flight deck would of course turn into utter chaos, but if it's between losing some fighters/crew overboard and taking a hit, I'm sure the captain would choose the former over the latter. BTW, it's kind of an open secret that USN carriers have a top speed that is actually much closer to 40 knots than to 30 knots.
Yeah, I'm not gonna bet on a 45mph object outmaneuvering a mach 9 object anymore than I'd bet on a 35mph object doing it. And this all means that regardless of whether it gets hit, every round of missile dodging puts the carrier in a hell state, losing crew/fighters, and likely even causing jets and maintenance vehicles to slam into each other inside the hangers. Even if it doesn't get sunk, is it going to be in any fighting shape after doing that multiple times?
That kind of hyperbole out of him makes it even more likely he either doesn't know what he's talking about, or is hyping up the China Threat even harder.
America has a known idiot and blabbermouth with the highest clearance making statements in public he shouldn't be. The correct analysis is that he's likely giving away secrets or at least sensitive information. It's dishonest to say that he's an idiot so let's pretend all his words are gibberish.
BTW "more" carriers isn't a USN solution to defeating Chinese ballistic missiles. They would be bringing that many carriers for other reasons anyway, like overwhelming strike power.
Yeah, I know. And they'd be facing China's overwhelming missile force, which is a few zeros more than the number of carriers they can bring.
You're referring to a 'mission kill'. I've not heard anything even remotely authoritative about HGV payloads, and have no reason to believe that the PLARF would automatically rule out using AOE munitions to enhance hit probability. Maybe you can link some articles. BTW, fragmentation and cluster munitions don't have great penetrative capability. What they would do is mainly surface damage to a flight deck by (potentially) setting planes on fire, detonating fuel and munitions, kill people, damage catapults, and damage the island. Whether such munitions are likely to result in a mission kill would depend on the extent of damage to mainly the catapults and the island, and possibly what types and how many fuel tanks and munitions were set off; those explosions could potentially penetrate the armored deck (depending on location) and cause big problems. Planes and people can be replaced, but these things can't. Is one cluster munition-based HGV enough to mission kill a carrier? Maybe. I don't think anyone knows.
So firstly, DF-21D is believed by the West to one-hit kill carriers. That right there is going to cause huge problems for the USN.
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The rest of your assumption is basically based on the idea that the PLARF could nerf a missile designed to kill carriers into one that would serve a severely reduced payload and no longer have the one-shot capability. And even then, you did not assume them to actually have the significant increase in hit probability because the, "I don't think anyone knows" would remain that anyway. To me, this is a darned-if-they-do-and-darned-if-they-don't situation for the USN. If the PLARF was to foresake one-hit-kill capability for increases in hit rate, I'd assume it's because they believe they would increase the hit so significantly that they can pepper a carrier at will with it and turn into swiss cheese with great reliability. After all, it's their study and their call on whether or not to make that exchange.
Most of Trump's picks for cabinet positions are fairly shocking TBH. Like known anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. for Secretary of HHS.
Yeah, but stupid means too stupid to keep something secret. It doesn't mean so stupid we have to pretend that all his words are gibberish.
"It's going to be" is the key operative phrase here.
OK, I used it loosely. Logically, China did build them and will continue to build them with a large margin of error for a Taiwan conflict that involves the US.
I have no doubt that if any country can mass produce and maintain large numbers of large ballistic missiles, it's going to be China. But whether it can produce enough in time for invasion and has the money to produce to levels that the PLARF wants, we don't know.
Produce them in time for the invasion? We call when that time is. If the PLARF says they're not ready, there is no invasion. If the PLARF says we need this many missiles, that will be the highest priority to get them produced... or what are we even doing here? What's the point of building all this to invade and then not arming up with enough missiles? This is another instance of "we don't know" being technically true but operationally not reflective of what's absolutely favored to be true.

@latenlazy @Iron Man could you 2 stop insulting each other? There was already moderation to stop this between you 2 and I don't wanna get mixed up as part of that and get banned too for continuing.
 
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Gloire_bb

Major
Registered Member
PLAN amphibious forces like LCMs and hovercraft are literally the first waves of landing forces meant to defeat and secure an OPPOSED landing zone; they are the tip of the spear that has to locate and defeat whatever defenses remain after PLARF and PLAAF have had their turns.
Second/third wave, depending on suitability of helicopter landing.

Preferred first surface wave is amphibious armored vehicles and/or fast craft, attacking in similar manner as they would on the ground.

LCMs are vulnerable; Surface effect craft are, fast as they are, gas bombs. They need beachhead.
 

00CuriousObserver

Junior Member
Registered Member
While all this convo is ongoing, I'm gonna share something by Ayi a while ago:

How much ammunition is needed to annihilate the entire Taiwanese military?

The answer: 1,300 ballistic missiles, 1,600 cruise missiles, 10,000 Shahed drones, 3 million artillery shells and rockets, 40,000 aerial munitions, and 500,000 FPV/loitering munition drones.


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He's basing this off how much Ukraine has lost, which he assumes to be identical to how much Taiwan will lose, and what it takes to achieve Ukraine's losses.
 
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