PLA strike strategies in westpac HIC

Tomboy

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With the J-35 entering service I think the issue of lack of medium power turbofan for drones should be solved.
Drones need low-medium power high bypass turbofans not low bypass engines for maximum efficiency.
 

gelgoog

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Definitively not high bypass. Maybe more bypass than military jets, something more like a business jet.
 

Tomboy

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Definitively not high bypass. Maybe more bypass than military jets, something more like a business jet.
Technically speaking anything more than 5 can be considered "High BPR" but IMO definition is sorta of murky. AE3007 used by the RQ-4 is a bizjet engine with a BPR of exactly 5. Your right that smaller drones usually use medium bypass engines with 2-4 BPR.

BTW do anyone know what engine WZ-9 is using? It's approximately RQ-4 classed if not heavier but I'm not aware of any medium-high BPR engine in the range that is sufficient to power this drone.
 

gelgoog

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Even a low bypass turbofan should have much better fuel efficiency than a turbojet. But yeah a medium bypass engine would be better for a high endurance drone.

The problem with the high bypass engines is you get more drag. It worsens top speed and agility.

If you want a high bypass turbofan of that kind of power level you need some kind of exotic complex three shaft or geared turbofan engine like this I think:
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Wrought

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Estimates on daily strike capacity by range. He seems to be calculating for PLARF + PLAAF.

Calculations for The Economist by Timothy Walton of the Hudson Institute, an American think-tank, illustrate the challenge. His model suggests China could rain about 2,000 bombs or missiles a day on targets within 500nm, including hundreds on Kadena, a big American air-force base in Okinawa. It could simultaneously drop some 450 munitions a day over the second island chain, including Guam and its vital complex of bases, 1,600nm away; 60-odd over important rear bases in Alaska; and perhaps a score a day over faraway places such as Hawaii, the headquarters of America’s Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), 3,600nm back. Missiles can strike quickly and accurately, though most munitions would in fact be delivered by aircraft. (These theoretical figures assume that no planes or missiles are shot down, and Chinese facilities are not attacked.)

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4Tran

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Estimates on daily strike capacity by range. He seems to be calculating for PLARF + PLAAF.



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If it's missing the PLAGF's rocket artillery then this misses out on some of the most potent weapons against Taiwan itself. Still, it does show how ugly this scenario looks for American planners. It almost doesn't matter how many planes the USAF has if their airbases can be largely neutralized for the duration of the conflict.
 

Wrought

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MIT paper modelling various scenarios for contested airspace, which concludes that current US strategy is dangerously flawed.

How has the balance of power shifted in maritime East Asia, and what does this change mean for the U.S.-China military competition in the region? We examine these questions by focusing on a central pillar of U.S. military might—land-based air power—in the context of a war over Taiwan. We create a new, unclassified, and transparent model of a Taiwan conflict, which allows users to explore multiple scenarios, alternative U.S. basing options, various People's Liberation Army attack strategies, and a range of potential U.S. defensive enhancements to see how those alternatives influence outcomes.

We find that: (1) the United States' current approach to defend Taiwan exposes U.S. forces to significant risk of catastrophic defeat; (2) the U.S. Air Force's answer to this problem is both unlikely to work and escalatory; and (3) a combination of hardening air bases and enhancing missile defenses and local jamming at U.S. facilities is a better option. More broadly, U.S. national security policy toward China approaches an inflection point. The United States can lean in and significantly enhance the resilience of its forces in East Asia; lean back and rely more on instruments of military power that are less vulnerable to China's regional defense systems; or reconsider its broader geopolitical goals in the region. The current path, seeking to deter Chinese attacks with a vulnerable forward-based military posture, courts disaster.

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