PLA strike strategies in westpac HIC

AndrewS · Jul 21, 2022

Patchwork_Chimera said:
I can understand yours as well. However, Ukraine and China are *very* different matters.

The US has little to no reason to get involved in Ukraine - we're perfectly content drawing blood by proxy. Taiwan on the other hand is considered symbolic of US hegemony in the WESTPAC, and the political discourse is (currently at least) very much in the direction of intervention. Nuclear power or not doesn't matter that much. China is not going to nuke the US for intervening, and we are not going to nuke China for invading. If the US were to invade the PRC and somehow succeed, then sure - yeah, maybe the nukes come into play. However, in all non-existential scenarios, they're a tool for deterrence and deterrence only.

A Chinese economic collapse caused by a war in the Western Pacific is an existential issue for China. But for the US, the Western Pacific is not existential.

Once China has parity in terms of its nuclear arsenal, what would be the US response if China was losing and launched a small tactical nuke at a military target on Japanese or Australian soil, and which resulted in fewer casualties than a US carrier being sunk? Remember that China now has nuclear parity and can continue escalating because the Western Pacific matters far more to China than the US.

I agree that Taiwan is symbolic of US hegemony in the Western Pacific.

But for the past 2 millenia, China has been the natural hegemon from a economic, political and military perspective in the Western Pacific. From the Chinese point of view, the past 100 years or so have been a historical aberration.

Patchwork_Chimera said:
Frankly, I was more referring to the ability of US Bombers from Diego Garcia and AU to generate salvos targeting SCS military installations, and the ability of the US to achieve local force parity south and west of the SCS. COMSUBPAC has everything within a couple hundred nm of the second island chain fairly comprehensively locked down for the time being, so until the PLA expands its expeditionary ASW capability by a significant margin, I don't view surface force sorties out much farther than a bit beyond the 1IC to be prudent.

The SCS military installations are definitely a secondary target.
What does attacking these actually accomplish given the primary PLA target is Taiwan?
And unless an amphibious operation wrests away control of the SCS islands, the Chinese can regenerate the facilities as they are relatively close to China.

And if US bombers launch JASSMs at the SCS or Malacca Straits, these have to cross Indonesian or Malaysian territory.
Do you see Indonesia or Malaysia being very happy with a situation which turns their internal waters into a warzone?
They would be obliged to shoot down these US bombers/JASSMs and deny the US access to their airspace.

clockwork · Jul 21, 2022

Patchwork_Chimera said:
The US will not arbitrarily commit national suicide, and condemn millions of its citizens to death or post-apocalyptic survival, over a few thousand sailors

I disagree with your framing of it as a conscious "decision to commit national suicide". Of course no leader would ever explicitly make that decision (or tell themselves that's the decision they're making at the time), but that's not how escalation works. I could easily see the US escalating to a limited use of tactical nukes against the PLA in response to devastating losses and I doubt they'd see such an act as committing suicide, even if it is inevitably the first step in an uncontrollable chain of events that ends in countervalue exchange.

Even more directly suicidal acts (initiating a massive strategic first strike) has alternate rationale ("damage limitation") in US policy.

SlothmanAllen · Jul 21, 2022

This thread is kind of weird. We are talking about potentially thousands of people dying and maybe millions more if some sort of nuclear exchange happens. Also, it seems to get people really fired up about the best way to kill a bunch of people. I am all for discussing neat military technology, technical breakthroughs, etc but a thread attempting to determine the best way to kill a bunch of people is in very poor taste.

Michaelsinodef · Jul 21, 2022

SlothmanAllen said:
This thread is kind of weird. We are talking about potentially thousands of people dying and maybe millions more if some sort of nuclear exchange happens. Also, it seems to get people really fired up about the best way to kill a bunch of people. I am all for discussing neat military technology, technical breakthroughs, etc but a thread attempting to determine the best way to kill a bunch of people is in very poor taste.

This is a forum for discussion of military matters focused on the PLA.

It really shouldn't come as a surprise people would want to discuss some hypothetical scenario such as China vs the US over Taiwan, which in reality is a scenario that have a % of happening (I wouldn't even put it as low, more like somewhere between ~50-20% imo).

AndrewS · Jul 21, 2022

Michaelsinodef said:
This is a forum for discussion of military matters focused on the PLA.

It really shouldn't come as a surprise people would want to discuss some hypothetical scenario such as China vs the US over Taiwan, which in reality is a scenario that have a % of happening (I wouldn't even put it as low, more like somewhere between ~50-20% imo).

I think 50% is far too high.
Personally I put the likelihood of a US-China war in the region of 10-20%.

And it's good to discuss the effects, because it shows there aren't really any winners if there is a US-China war.

AndrewS · Jul 21, 2022

Patchwork_Chimera said:
Well hey, firstly I actually owe you an apology. Wasn't in the greatest headspace when I was replying earlier, so I'm sorry if I came off abrasively.

Now, I would personally have to disagree with this. In the event of a general war between the United States and China, pretty much everybody would go into a **very** sizable economic downturn. The most important thing though, is that most of our modeling suggests the United States would have it somewhat worse than the PRC in this regard. Thus, I would consider the economic side of things to somewhat favor the PRC if anything. Further, I don't consider there to be a likely reality in which the PRC initiates hostilities while the US has such a knife to their throats in being able to cause general economic "collapse" (which I don't view as very likely. serious recession? yes, that's unavoidable; but not collapse).

No worries.

But the economic downturn comment is interesting. Would the US be hit harder than China on an relative and/or absolute scale?

The last thing I saw on this was this RAND 2013 report below which argued that China would come off worse than the US.

AndrewS said:
And if both the US and China refrain from attacking each others homeland, then China does actually have an advantage over the USA in terms of population, economic heft and especially industrial output.

RAND has an old study (below) based on 2013/2014 figures which looked at the economic consequences of a China-US war.

Back then, they calculated a GDP decrease of 6% for the USA and a 17% decrease for China after 1 year. If you apply that to the PPP figures (which more accurately reflect real economic output of goods and services), you end up with

USA 2021: $22.99 Trillion minus 6% = $21.6 Trillion
China 2021: $26.57 Trillion minus 17% = $22 Trillion

So China still has a slightly larger economy than the USA after 1 year, coupled with a much larger industrial and manufacturing sector.

(In 2019, China accounted for 28.7% of global manufacturing output whilst the US was at 16.8%, as per the UN)

Plus this analysis certainly overstates the negative impact on China. Since 2014, China's economy has doubled in size on an exchange rate basis, whilst the US only grew 32% (one-third). China's military is also far more capable in 2022 than in 2014. China's importance as a trade and investment partner for other countries (particularly its neighbours) is also vastly greater than back in 2014.

So a lot more of China's trade would continue.

The RAND report is below which outlines the methodology.
If someone wants to calculate what the updated scenario looks like, all the numbers for 2020/2021 should be publicly available.

rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1140.html

AndrewS · Jul 21, 2022

Patchwork_Chimera said:
Oh absolutely. I'm not contesting that the PRC is sort of the "natural" East Asian power player, but East and South Asia are quickly becoming (and to an extent, already have become) the beating heart of world affairs. The economic, population, trade, etc. "center of gravity" of the world. For the US to relinquish a hegemonic status in the region simply because another (adversarial, mind you) actor is more suited to the role is, in my opinion, never going to happen. It's not really about what's right or what's best, it's about what suits us.

Here's the thing. It's relatively easy to imagine a world in 15 years time where China has an economy twice the size of the USA and also spends significantly more on the military.

US global hegemony would be untenable, never mind US hegemony in the Western Pacific next to China.

At that point, the rational course of action for the USA is to abandon its commitments to Taiwan, because the alternative is far worse.
And if Taiwan is on its own, it will negotiate for the best political settlement that it can. China doesn't want a war if it can be avoided.

AndrewS · Jul 21, 2022

Patchwork_Chimera said:
I would personally disagree with this. Indonesia/Malaysia would doubtless be miffed about US forces employing munitions over their airspace, but we do not factor their consent into our planning. The ability for Indonesia/Malaysia to meaningfully contest US airpower is scarce-to-none, and thus we don't consider their kinetic involvement in the event of our munitions overflying their airspace to be a significant factor. On this one, I speak from experience having asked similar questions myself.

If you assume US bombers are operating from Australia, they actually have to pass through Indonesian airspace to attack targets in the SCS, and launch those JASSMs whilst in airspace above the Indonesian Archipelago.

That will cause an absolute political *!%^storm in Indonesia.
And where Indonesia goes, the rest of ASEAN will follow.
Not that the rest of ASEAN will need much persuading. Even the Philippines is on the fence these days on joining the US in a war against China.

I can easily see Indonesia and the rest of ASEAN declaring all their airspace and maritime space closed to the US (EDIT: and Chinese) military.
And the rest of the world (especially China) will support this stance.

If you look at Ukraine sanctions, only 1 billion people live in countries which have sanctioned Russia.
The other 7 billion people in the world are neutral.

And if the US still sends bombers through Indonesian airspace, I can see the Indonesians tacitly allowing the Chinese Navy to transit through Indonesia waters to Australia.

---

It reminds me of Blinken's recent statement that China is on the wrong side of history with regards to Russia.
But if 7 out of 8 billion people in the world (including China) haven't sanctioned Russia, that suggests China is on the right side of history.

clockwork · Jul 21, 2022

Patchwork_Chimera said:
I understand where you're coming from (very much so in fact, as when I was getting into the field this was actually a course of action I myself held to be prudent), but I'd like to state pretty definitively that there exists no CONOP in which we retaliate against conventional losses with our own nuclear weapons. We've modeled these sorts of scenarios very extensively (in fact, PLA usage of nuclear weapons against CSGs was a concern for quite a long time until they developed their conventional anti-shipping complex enough to pose a threat from that vector), and almost universally a small nuclear employment escalates and escalates until we're looking at similar scenarios to general nuclear exchange. The uncertainty of having a nuclear weapon detonated, and not necessarily knowing if there are more coming alone is enough to risk strategic exchange (In wargaming and COA analysis, we've had scenarios in which F-35s employed B-61s against SCS installations, and the PRC initiated a strategic exchange, believing it to be the start of a broader nuclear conflict).

Should the PRC employ tactical nuclear weapons first, or should they employ other CBRN-based weapons, yes tactical nuclear retaliation is on the cards; but US first use of nuclear weapons upon suffering significant losses to the PLA is simply not something we even plan for these days.

That's all very interesting. But I honestly find it hard to believe literally nobody in DoD has done any planning on this front, even if you/the ones you worked with haven't. If a president (especially one like Trump more inclined to reach for "the nukular" after seeing his military get BTFOd) said they wanted to use nukes to turn the tide or punish China, I can't see his staff just saying "sorry, we've never planned for that" instead of presenting options, if just together with a caveat that it's highly risky.

Btw, are you saying you used to think retaliating with nuclear first use to a conventional loss was a good idea? Because they lacked symmetrical response options/had a smaller arsenal in general? If anything I think it would've been more dangerous, cuz they would've retaliated with DF-5s lol.

vincent · Jul 21, 2022

clockwork said:
Btw, are you saying you used to think retaliating with nuclear first use to a conventional loss was a good idea? Because they lacked symmetrical response options/had a smaller arsenal in general? If anything I think it would've been more dangerous, cuz they would've retaliated with DF-5s lol.

When China only had 300 nukes, US can safely nuke China without worry much about retaliatory strikes. Think about it, over 90% of Chinese launch vehicles will get wipe out in a first strike, the remaining few may suffer launch failures, mishaps, targeting errors, etc. The ones that make it to the air will be track by the THAAD system in South Korea, cuing the GMD to intercept them (greatly increase the interception chance). It is quite likely none of Chinese ICBMs will reach CONUS.

PLA strike strategies in westpac HIC

AndrewS

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clockwork

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SlothmanAllen

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Michaelsinodef

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AndrewS

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AndrewS

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AndrewS

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AndrewS

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clockwork

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vincent

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