PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

Ever wonder what if China will to fit radar return devices on thousands of small unmanned sea goung crafts that reflects back signatures that resemble exisitng major China warships?

So if US will to deploy 3,000 missiles against an invasion fleet from Mainland, and PLAN may repond with building 30,000 small unmanned radar decoy boats. No doubt some of these missiles might correctly aimed at the real PLAN ships but these ships are not defenseless.

《政府工作报告》连续两年未提“和平统一”，国台办回应​

据中国网消息，国务院台湾事务办公室于3月12日举行例行新闻发布会，发言人陈斌华就近期两岸热点问题回答记者提问。
有记者提问，民进党当局称，解放军无预警在台湾西南海域实弹射击演训是“公然违反国际惯例，造成高度威胁，是对区域安全稳定的公然挑衅与破坏”。对此发言人有何评论？
陈斌华表示，台湾是中国的一部分，解放军在台海周边组织演训行动，合法合理，天经地义。民进党当局勾连外部势力不断进行谋“独”挑衅，是台海和平稳定的最大乱源和现实威胁。解放军相关演训行动，彰显了我们捍卫国家主权和领土完整的坚强决心、坚定意志、强大能力。正告民进党当局，“台独”挑衅一日不止，反制行动就一刻不停。

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Chinese state work report hasn't used the term peaceful reunification in over two years, this question was asked and addressed by the Taiwan Affairs Office. I.e., Armed Reunification is expected.

oseaidjubzac said:

More importantly, U.S. military bases in Japan have never operated such a massive bomber formation, and I have serious doubts about their actual sortie efficiency.

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Those bases will not exist long after the start of the Sino-US war.

what china needs is LRASM equivalent to turn the tides even further - a lot of US anti-air defense is geared towards intercepting ballistic missiles. A long range LO cruise missile that can fit in as many platforms as possible, the perfect complement to hypersonic missiles. Anyone have estimates on the production numbers of AKF-98A? although that type seems to be much smaller than the LRASM.

grulle said:

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This is an old article but I never got a closer look at it. Apparently the secret to US forces defeating China is the JASSM. The US launched thousands of these missiles to destroy Chinese ships and land based assets. The LRASM is the anti ship version of it. Is it really that simple? Is China's land and sea based air defenses capable of handling this missile? Also, it's not like China cannot hit back. Although with the Extended Range version of this missile, the planes launching them would likely be outside of the range of Chinese air defenses.

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In the absence of better missiles, it's the only option for US to stay in the fight. That's hardly a secret.

But having a few 1000 okayish missiles nearly or around as sophisticated as China's bread and butter subsonic missiles far from means US will have a success in an invasion... This is a very obvious fact as well. China can send in more and more varied missiles than just JASSM equivalents, which US don't have equivalents to.

Currently the only way US is gambling on winning is that China would lose political resolve if US successfully pulled off a surprise first attack/fast decisive battle. Once China mobilizes for a long fight, the American economy and resources aren't enough to hold out. Especially not today during the Trump recession.

how lethal are stealthy missiles though. If you change the shape to make it stealthy, does that make it close to invisible on radar? I'm wondering if modern air defense radars can deal with this threat. the JASSM came out over 20 years ago and it seems like to date, it is one of the few stealthy shaped missiles out there. Any reason why other countries are not prioritizing this technology?

grulle said:

how lethal are stealthy missiles though. If you change the shape to make it stealthy, does that make it close to invisible on radar? I'm wondering if modern air defense radars can deal with this threat. the JASSM came out over 20 years ago and it seems like to date, it is one of the few stealthy shaped missiles out there. Any reason why other countries are not prioritizing this technology?

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The improvement in survivability is quite small, we see most storm shadow, kh-69 etc seemingly get intercepted or otherwise don't find their targets.

It can only ever be a small piece of the whole puzzle. Combined strike is required with high maneuverability fast warheads.

polati said:

what china needs is LRASM equivalent to turn the tides even further - a lot of US anti-air defense is geared towards intercepting ballistic missiles. A long range LO cruise missile that can fit in as many platforms as possible, the perfect complement to hypersonic missiles. Anyone have estimates on the production numbers of AKF-98A? although that type seems to be much smaller than the LRASM.

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there's real tests of efficacy of cruise missiles in Ukraine.


Note that though these are claims, the relative level shouldn't be different.

Cruise missiles including stealthy Kh-69 have a 60% interception rate while ballistics (Iskander, Kalibr-M) have <10% interception rate.


On the other side, 50% of Storm Shadows get shot down while even ATACMS, a much smaller and slower ballistic system than Iskander or Kalibr-M, is at 20%.

Ballistics are harder to intercept even with the huge effort given towards intercepting them.

wow so these so-called American experts just expect the JASSM to easily penetrate the most layered and integrated air defenses in the world (China). I wonder how they do their wargames. It seemingly does not account for what the opponent can do. It only accounts for what the US can do (with high expectations of success).

grulle said:

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This is an old article but I never got a closer look at it. Apparently the secret to US forces defeating China is the JASSM. The US launched thousands of these missiles to destroy Chinese ships and land based assets. The LRASM is the anti ship version of it. Is it really that simple? Is China's land and sea based air defenses capable of handling this missile? Also, it's not like China cannot hit back. Although with the Extended Range version of this missile, the planes launching them would likely be outside of the range of Chinese air defenses.

Click to expand...

grulle said:

how lethal are stealthy missiles though. If you change the shape to make it stealthy, does that make it close to invisible on radar? I'm wondering if modern air defense radars can deal with this threat. the JASSM came out over 20 years ago and it seems like to date, it is one of the few stealthy shaped missiles out there. Any reason why other countries are not prioritizing this technology?

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Although those munitions are for the most part LO, and would be hard to detected for most of their flight profile, once they become visible, they are usually quite easy to defeat. They actually can be easily countered if you have high kill rate CIWS.

That's why I have said in previous threads that the PLAN needs to increase the number of gun based CIWS per ship to two for each destroyer/frigate. And even more importantly, you would need some type of CIWS organically on at least some of the medium sized amphibious ships (I mean 730s and 1130s), so that you don't need surface combatants to be always escorting them. And with each landing ship >500 tonnes having its own close in defense, it would be hard to imagine that LRASM would be able to score more than a handful of kills in the strait.