Even still, its easy to hide but if PLAAF hopefully gets total aerial superiority there will be no chance of ROCA at launching anything.
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
Stop thinking the ROC armed forces as a regular army and start thinking of them as Hezbollah or Iran.
I think a much better analogous situation for this is Gaza rather than Iran or Ukraine.
Now yes, Taiwan is much bigger than Gaza, but the disparity in forces is much closer to IDF vs Hamas rather than RuAF vs UAF+NATO aid. The sheer number of sensors, drones, or really... any kind of strike platform against the much more limited ability for Taiwan to hide and prosecute their target sets.
There are a lot more lessons to be gleaned from Gaza I think, than from either Ukraine or Iran.
I disagree even though the gap between China and Taiwan is huge, Taiwan is still a modern military with modern weapons, HAMAS, has none of that, what HAMAS does is attack and hide and repeat but Taiwan wouldn’t do that, so it’s far better to learn from Ukraine and Russia than take lessons from Isreal and HAMAS other than in the later stages where I would expect Taiwan to act more like HAMAS but I still think there is alot more lessons to learn from Ukraine and Russia but I do think China should learn lessons from both
The disparity is far too large between the two forces. There are things to learn from every conflict, but I expect China's strike complex to be significantly more sophisticated than Russia's. As well as having far bigger magazines and firing bandwidth.
The greatest challenges in a Taiwan conflict, aside from dealing with US+Allies, is population control, target discrimination, collateral damage, etc. At least in my opinion.
Gaza is very instructive in what not to do.
Most subsea cables in Taiwan are connecting to Mainland China/HK. A small number going to Japan.
So ROCA going to load MLRS onto the back of a pickup truck?
@plawolf is correct IMO, most of these weapons will be a single-use scenario. Even M109s. Maybe a few volleys to slow down any landing attempts. Once fired, almost certainly will be destroyed by aerial attack.
What is HIMARS/ATACMS really suitable for? It can try to hit targets on the mainland, but there will be a high chance of interception. It is not accurate enough to hit moving sea targets. Again, basically to launch at any PLA beachhead and probably be wiped off the board after.
All it means is they are bigger targets. 2nd best air force in a conflict tends to get wrecked with X to 0 or X to 1 kill ratios.
You should know that Ukraine had 1/3 the population of Russia and 1/8 of its GDP in 2022. Thats a similar ratio as WW2 Imperial Japan vs the US. For Russia this is a WW2 level conflict.
I do agree that the disparity is large but taking more lessons from Isreal and HAMAS in my opinion is the wrong choice given that Taiwan would fight at first more like Ukraine than HAMAS, HAMAS has no modern weapons they attack and then hide and repeat but Taiwan wouldn’t do that until later on. At first Taiwan would be using their tanks, missiles, artillery, and any remaining fighters to attack China and using their ground troops to hold ground and counter attack what none of that HAMAS really does but now once those things are mostly destroyed and they are running low on troops now they woukd start to fight like HAMAS more but taking more lessons from HAMAS and isreal because of the disparity between the two is similar in scale to Taiwan and China doesn’t account for the weapons and way taiwan would fight at first what is why I think China should take more lessons from Russia and Ukraine.
I understand your point here but my point is that focusing on how much stronger china is than Taiwan doesn’t tell the whole picture and shouldn’t mean you take more lessons from Isreal and HAMAS when the two couldn’t be any different, Taiwan will not fight like HAMAS but they will fight more like Ukraine so if you focus on taking more lessons from Isreal and HAMAS you risk not training for what an actual war will be like.
Well it's not about "modern" systems or not. The IDF needed to neutralize Hamas as a fighting force, because that's really what it's about.
The specifics are also quite similar as well. Gaza is an urban jungle with extensive underground fortifications. The entire area is almost like one giant bunker with mazes built into it. The IDF's challenge was having persistent ISR to shut down pop-up threats from Hamas's rockets and counter-attacks which could pop up essentially anywhere in Gaza.
This is very similar to the challenge PLA will be facing in Taiwan. On top of that, unlike the IDF, Taiwan is full of people and areas that PRC does not want to destroy or kill. Gaza is still useful here because it's really, the perfect example of how challenging it is to manage large masses of hostile people, while trying to kill fighters and war material hiding amongst them. Which will almost certainly be the case in any Taiwan scenario.
Now the reason I want to shy away from Ukraine and Iran is because the challenge there is completely different. Both Iran and Ukraine are far too large to have persistent ISR on 24/7. They're also far more sophisticated and have far greater magazine depth than Hamas. The mission therefore, for both Russia and IDF, is less about 24/7 ISR and Scud hunting, then it is about air defense.
I.E. in the Iran and Ukraine case, the IDF and Russia have to worry about hardening their critical nodes and attriting misisle volleys, as well as finding ways to paralyze the enemy's ability to fight. It's much close to "peer-conflict".
Whereas in a Gaza or Taiwan scenario you're not fighting a peer. You're really, managing an insurgency within a far smaller geographic area.
Yes, I take your point that Taiwan is, likely, much more capable than Hamas, but China is also much more capable than IDF. The assymetries between the two belligerents are just too big. It's a different kind of war.