I differ in thinking that China will have largely destroyed Taiwan's air defences before it attempts to land a large invasion force.
At a minimum multiple teams will have been inserted by boat/helicopter and would already be supported by HALE UAV overhead, which can't be reached except by fighter aircraft or large, high performance SAMs.
And once you have HALE UAV overhead, it's not a big stretch to start deploying inexpensive MALE UAVs.
I expect SEAD aircraft to be permanently over Taiwan anyway.
I see this as trading UAVs for less of a "vulnerability phase" during main force beach landings.
A CH-4 is only $4Mn. In comparison, a single ZBD-05 amphibious vehicle looks like $5M.
If the 6 Army Amphibious Assault Brigades each have 300 ZBD-05 vehicles, that is 1800 in total.
And they fully expect many ZBD-05 vehicles to be destroyed during any campaign.
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It looks like a J-16 costs $80Mn, so let's say a JH-7A costs the same.
And that it realistically has a loiter time of 3hours over Taiwan.
So you need 8 JH-7A (costing $480Mn) to provide 24 hour coverage with 12x 250kg bombs
In comparison, a CH-4 drone is $4Mn so you can buy 20 for the cost of a J-16/JH-7A.
And let's say you need 3 CH-4 to provide 24hour coverage.
So for the same procurement cost to have a single JH-7A on station over Taiwan, you can have 6-7 CH-4 in orbit at any time.
That could comprise 2 with a SAR + 5 for attack.
Plus those 5 attack CH-4 could carry 36 x50kg bombs in total. Alternatively, it could be 72x 20kg AR-2 missiles. That is respectively 3x and 6x as many targets.
Yes, the individual bombs are smaller, but a 50kg bomb or 20kg missile is more than adequate for any armoured vehicle.
That should result in much better overall coverage and responsiveness.
At some point, any remaining Taiwanese air defences will have to reveal themselves and fire, otherwise there is no point in them being there at all. So you might as well start flying inexpensive CH-4 type drones (or CH-3s) over Taiwan before any invasion, and hoping Taiwanese air defences reveal themselves.
So, first of all your numbers are very off. A single CH-4 has a payload of 350kg yes, but that includes the EO payload. Once you account for that, the armament payload is far less. there's a reason why CH-4s typically are only shown with 2-4 maximum.
Five CH-4s could carry 20 weapons between them, and only ATGM or 50kg weight class PGMs at that.
Second of all, we don't know how much a J-16 costs exactly -- but lol no, a JH-7A most certainly does not cost as much as a J-16. Sure, a JH-7A obviously costs more than a CH-4, but there's no need to make out of bounds suggestions like it costs as much as a J-16.
Third, there absolutely is a difference between HALE and MALE UAVs.
Being capable of successfully deploying HALE UAVs for a standoff ISR mission does not mean you are able to deploy MALE UCAVs for a strike mission. Your MALE UCAVs will still need to get within 10-15 kilometers of the target to release a hellfire class ATGM weapon.
Fourth, I do not believe that the by the time the PLA conducts an amphibious assault, that the ROC military's air defenses will be sufficiently attrited to be considered a permissive environment for MALE UCAVs to operate in a strike role. Or rather, I do not think the PLA will have the luxury of time to wait for the ROC's air defenses to be attrited to that degree before starting their amphibious assault phase.
Long range air defenses and early warning radars, sure, they'll probably be gone. But I fully expect medium range and short range air defense systems to likely still be in operation in dispersed units, and modern medium range systems are more than sufficient to defeat MALE UCAVs.
Fifth, the beauty of buying PGMs and SAR pods is that you already have all of the aircraft platforms and infrastructure and personnel to deploy them, which is the most expensive part of the total package. Buying a bunch of UCAVs means you are committed to not only buying the aircraft and their support systems and personnel to operate them, but the weapons for them as well.
Sixth, speed. The ability to dynamcially reposition against new, time sensitive targets is something that MALE UCAVs simply cannot achieve for strike missions.
Seventh, payload/airframe ratio. The idea of dispersing a large payload over a large number of "cheap" UCAVs sounds nice until you realize have to deconflict the airspace during the important parts of the operation where you have to go out and defeat the inevitable ROC military counter attack and shove a whole bunch of MALE UCAVs into the same small battlespace.
I believe that in terms of strike payload capacity, during the "vulnerable phase" of the amphibious assault operation, there should be 8 strike fighters orbiting over the strait (outside of ROC air defenses) each loaded with 12x 250kg bombs each, and backed up by two H-6K bombers each with 36x 250kg bombs with wing/range extension kits.
So that's 42 tons of loitering PGMs, which I think would be a safe airborne on watch strike capacity during the 24-48 hours of the initial amphibious assault phase where the odds of a successful ROC counter attack is highest.
How many CH-4s would be needed to carry
42 tons equivalent of munitions?
Now, I don't have any issues against MALE UCAVs for longer endurance closer in ISR and limited strike missions in more permissive environments over a long duration. They are well suited for such a mission.
But we are talking about a phase of conflict that is likely to be high intensity, requiring survivability, firepower capacity, and speed, over a limited time period of 24-48 hours.
There's really no need to be fancy and pursue a "novel" solution like buying MALE UCAVs for conducting an intensive strike on call mission profile over a short time period in a non-permissive environment. MALE UCAVs just aren't appropriate for that kind of mission.
Strike fighters already exist, and the PLA already have the most expensive part of that package -- the aircraft and the pilots. They just need to commit to buying a hundred or so SAR pods and commit to procurement of a family of 250kg and 100kg PGMs, and with the requisite addition of the training syllabus, they'll have a ready made solution with the same current orbat footprint without requiring a major expansion of manpower or novel support systems.
Personally I think they've already comfortable surpassed the minimum number of 071 and 075 required.
Ok. Then let's go back to something like the existing VP-4 series of vehicles, which have a driver or can be remote controlled.
You can realistically operate these as resupply vehicles for infantry in urban and mountainous areas in Taiwan, unlike other vehicles.
UGVs are not at that state of maturity.
Frankly I think it would be better just to ignore UGVs for the purpose of discussion due to their relative immaturity and the experimentation and doctrine development and systems development that would be needed for just general use purposes, let alone perfecting them for a Taiwan contingency.
Remember, the systems I described were all ones that were mature enough to already be in PLA service in some form, or so technologically mature and doctrinally mature among the rest of the world that the PLA could easily adopt it.
