PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

Announcement mirroring what we'll likely see when that day comes.

Gloire_bb said:

It is doable, and the more you are preparing for it, the better. We're talking several men(1-2 professionals), small hidden fuel/weapon dumps, trailers/furl trucks and pickups carrying weapons around. It's almost surprising how little aircraft may in fact need, when compared to aircraft designed without it in mind.

This is only stoppable though proper, absolute air dominance, after near absolute success of DEAD. Otherwise, too few long range fires, too much collateral (even relatively small rural population and overall civilian traffic is still annoyingly huge compared to small air force supply).

Sweden or former Switzerland (with literal mountain underground carriers) is ideal case studies what you can do, when you want.

But Taiwan preferred that very "others
", which just doesn't take austere basing well.

Even the local F-CK, otherwise a very reasonable design, just skipped on it: it was ultimately conceptualized in 1980s. I guess ROCAF was more worried about their glorious return to Fujian, not survival; it only became problem 2-3 decades later.

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AMRAAM is too long for a regular pickup truck, you'd need a full flatbed.
In any case, it is not possible for one man to load weapons, you need at least 2, but probably even more. They are heavy.
With this in mind, you can only have so many weapons/fuel dumps, otherwise you are spreading your personnel too far. Can they get there in time to rearm and refuel? etc.

The kinds of weapons fielded by the PLA at this point were never even conceptualized by planners in the 90's and even 00's. It is not easy to dig up older articles from that time, but there was still a huge expectation that China would lean heavily into Russian development. Even something like the 052C was a big surprise and still much attributed to Russian/Ukrainian assistance. The number of KJ-500 was not expected to be this high. Even if ROCAF had STOVL, what kind of sorties could they generate? According to reports, MiG-31 with R37M and no other support has forced many Ukrainian aircraft to abort missions. PL-17 could be used in a similar fashion. Harrier would have bought 10 years of additional deterrence at best and totally obsolete by now. F-35B could be useful to avoid detection by radar, but EO drones could cue AESA to beamsteer and provide a track for PL-17 before the missile switches to IIR terminal

supersnoop said:

In any case, it is not possible for one man to load weapons, you need at least 2, but probably even more. They are heavy.

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I meant, 1 professional NCO and squad of conscripts. Normal Gripen field service team.

To be fair, that NCO is golden, with extreme levels of competence (arguably more valuable than pilot), but this is Swedish optimization (quite reasonable for Taiwan) and not necessary.

Otherwise, no disagreement.

supersnoop said:

Harrier would have bought 10 years of additional deterrence at best and totally obsolete by now.

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Personally I think they should've looked at local dispersable STOL/STOVL interceptor just around now, to back f-16v fleet. It isn't that special of technology.
Instead, they wasted their time on wanwanese KF-21 knockoff (twin f414) that they couldn't afford.

It could be kinda funny if China launched AR on the 1st of April and everyone thought it was an Aprils Fools and only believed it was real after it was over.

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manqiangrexue said:

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Not exactly what was said, but OK.

manqiangrexue said:

You can just read through the thread. Nothing in Taiwan would surrender constant Chinese missile/fighter/armed drone suppression. Without the US, Taiwan would just surrender. The polls didn't even ask about the US; they asked if young people in Taiwan would fight China and most said no.

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I caution extrapolating these things from polls/surveys. One wouldn't expect most of the civilian population to agree to fight an enemy - this is just an example of selection bias. The poll doesn't negate the fact that Taiwan's military will put up significant resistance.

manqiangrexue said:

Puahahaha. They have a jet their their own citizens call "I Don't Fly."

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And what about their 200+ F-16Vs and 50+ Mirage 2000s?

manqiangrexue said:

It's not going to be a defended coastline anymore after the PLARF then PLAAF get a couple hours with them. Nobody thinks an invasion starts with landing ships. This is the most common strawman that people like to put up when arguing that the PLA would have trouble invading Taiwan.

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Looks like we agree on something.

bsdnf said:

Ayi: The bottleneck is still explosives production (note: local governments generally do not like this literal powder keg under their administration, and the high safety requirements limits production capacity)

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Any idea how major of a bottleneck this is or if they have ways to circumvent the red tape? Sounds somewhat odd to me that a government like China's would allow municipal-level bureaucracy to hamper what is arguably their utmost national goal.

zhangjim said:

707's response indicates that this matter is not as optimistic as expected. The biggest problem is that without a sufficiently high-level leadership to coordinate, no place will take huge safety risks for large-scale storage of hazardous materials.
So this means that unless there is a clear risk of war, large-scale expansion of ammunition production is impossible. The worst-case scenario is that even if war breaks out, it is impossible to expand production on a large scale, and we must rely on inventory.
View attachment 149103
Optimistic emotions that blindly believe in production advantages are harshly criticized. Perhaps we can only pray that there will be enough ammunition to use in future wars?

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Who is this 707 person and is he credible? In the event of a military emergency, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that their leadership would brute force their way to ramping up explosives production?

Neurosmith said:

Any idea how major of a bottleneck this is or if they have ways to circumvent the red tape? Sounds somewhat odd to me that a government like China's would allow municipal-level bureaucracy to hamper what is arguably their utmost national goal.


Who is this 707 person and is he credible? In the event of a military emergency, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that their leadership would brute force their way to ramping up explosives production?

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Don't imagine China's political system as a completely top-down monolith; there are some negotiations between local governments and the central government. I don’t want to say “hamper”, but almost all local governments must bear the safety concerns and pressure of local residents for the chemical industry, and correspondingly, they will use safety rules to manage the production of chemical plants. This is a three-party negotiation process, just like anywhere else in the world. The military industry enjoys certain administrative exemptions, but the rules are still there, especially as the whole society increasingly emphasizes work safety.

bsdnf said:

Don't imagine China's political system as a completely top-down monolith; there are some negotiations between local governments and the central government. I don’t want to say “hamper”, but almost all local governments must bear the safety concerns and pressure of local residents for the chemical industry, and correspondingly, they will use safety rules to constrain chemical plants. This is a three-party negotiation process, just like anywhere else in the world. The military industry enjoys certain administrative exemptions, but the rules are still there, especially as the whole society increasingly emphasizes work safety.

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I assume that these constraints would be removed or loosened during times of crisis. Are there any publicized ways that their leadership is tackling this issue?

Stockpiling is also an option but (1) this would not suffice in a protracted war and (2) explosives have a shelf life.

Neurosmith said:

Not exactly what was said, but OK.

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Not exactly? You asked what evidence there was that the PRC would go to war over the ROC over a decaration of independence. You got, "China will 'not hesitate to start war' if Taiwan declares independence, Beijing says." What part of that wasn't exact enough for you?

Neurosmith said:

I caution extrapolating these things from polls/surveys. One wouldn't expect most of the civilian population to agree to fight an enemy - this is just an example of selection bias. The poll doesn't negate the fact that Taiwan's military will put up significant resistance.

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Yeah, you caution extrapolating from data you don't like. Taiwan's military is made of young civilians who are drafted. These are the type of young people who are interviewed. Taiwan's military will not put up significant resistance because on top of incompetence and cowardice (along with an understandable and correct lack of motivation in many cases), they will be constantly under suppression from overhead PLA forces.

Neurosmith said:

And what about their 200+ F-16Vs and 50+ Mirage 2000s?

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Burning trash after PLARF missile strikes, then constant suppression of any lingering ones by satellite scanning, SAM coverage, fighter jet and armed drone suppression. Nothing in Taiwan will fly without PLA consent after a few hours and I'm being kind. It's more likely within the hour.