PLAN Amphibious assault capability

IDonT · Dec 16, 2006

Violet Oboe said:
The whole D-day scenario is completely obsolete regarding an analysis of the current situation existing between the straits.

Crude military power used like in WW 2 would be simply dysfunctional and totally counterproductive and China is well advised to desist from such a selfdefeating strategy. The campaign eventually achieving the reintegration of Taiwan into some kind of ´Greater China´will rely heavily on economic, social, cultural and (probably pivotal) on psychological factors which will enable China to neutralize Taiwan´s ´anti-China forces´. Indeed the strength of the PLAAF and PLAN will be of secondary importance compared with China´s ability to absorb and redirect Taiwan´s economic and social potential.

Today the PLA primary objective regarding Taiwan is achieving the credible capability of destroying taiwanese military forces and effectively deterring US intervention if splittist forces on Taiwan should cross the ´red line´. The resulting strategic credibilty will be an instrument of utmost importance in the upcoming process of negotiations on ´normalization´with taiwanese leaders. (Beijing understands very well Teddy Roosevelt´s dictum: ´Talk softly but carry a big stick!´)

Violet,

The point of the thread is the PLAN's actual amphibious capability against its most likely operation, amphibious operation of Taiwan. Please leave the economic, social, cultural and psychological factors out of it for it does not add any value to this thread.

To respond to your post. No the PLAN does not have the capability to destroy ROC's military forces, short of nuking the island. Please don't respond by posting large numbers of IRBM that China has pointed at Taiwan. Ballistic missiles are just an expensive and inaccurate way of delivering a high explosive payload. Serbia still had manage to keep the majority of its armed forces intact after a 72 day bombing campaign by NATO.

Kilo636 · Dec 17, 2006

IDonT said:
Violet,

The point of the thread is the PLAN's actual amphibious capability against its most likely operation, amphibious operation of Taiwan. Please leave the economic, social, cultural and psychological factors out of it for it does not add any value to this thread.

To respond to your post. No the PLAN does not have the capability to destroy ROC's military forces, short of nuking the island. Please don't respond by posting large numbers of IRBM that China has pointed at Taiwan. Ballistic missiles are just an expensive and inaccurate way of delivering a high explosive payload. Serbia still had manage to keep the majority of its armed forces intact after a 72 day bombing campaign by NATO.

That is quite untrue. Ballistic missile is capable of performing mid course correction to achieve CEP even up to 50m.(Ballistic missile with more powerful warhead and greater impact likely to cause damage on airfield and other installation even with 50m CEP) There is a recently report from washington post of PRC having the so call silver bullet with their guided IRBM against the USN carrier fleet. IRBM with guide warhead is not something new and has been study by both the US and Soviet. But with more inexpensive and highly accurate cruise missile. Attention was shifted from guide IRBM.
Plus with PRC pursuing long range guide multiple rocket like WS-2(Some even can go up to 150km-200km) fit with GPS correction.

To claim ballistic missile and all this long range rocket is inaccurate and useless in Taiwan conflict scanario is seriously flaw... Even what you have claim really came true, 800 IRBM is more or less enough to waste all asset of Taiwan Air defense Missile ad free PRC fighter another threat.

Gollevainen · Dec 17, 2006

To claim ballistic missile and all this long range rocket is inaccurate and useless in Taiwan conflict scanario is seriously flaw... Even what you have claim really came true, 800 IRBM is more or less enough to waste all asset of Taiwan Air defense Missile ad free PRC fighter another threat.

Well thats sounds like in some video game..."I have this ammount of missiles and I fire the there and then the images of airport vannish from the CP screen and I can do other things..."

Well lets do little math, shall we??

The real number of ballistic missiles headed against Taiwan is around 500 missiles. Each missile carries 500 kg warhead so 500x500 is 250 000 kg of TNT to be fielded against Taiwan. It seems big, but lets compare that ammount against normal fire supporting availble to all normal armies...

Lets take a normal chinese group army which consist of 4 divisions (one amoured and 3 infantry) and one artillery division. Thats roughly 576 tubes.
If we count that one "piggie" weights 50 kg, we get the total number of 28 800 kg one firing sortie. 250 000 kg/28 800 kg = 8,6 rounds. So a single group army can put the same ammount of damage than the entire ballistic missile arsenal for just firing 9 times which is really nothing at all.

for example in Tienhaara battles in Karelia ishtmuss in summer 1944 Soviets fired 25 000 grenades (roughly 750 000 Kg of TNT...thats three times the ammunt of entire PLAs ballistic missiles

) into single village...and they didn't even brake the Finnish army defences....and thats with the artillerys accuracy (~25-50 meters CEP)

Perhaps PLA can destry single airport if they want to waste their entire arsenal to accomplish gnat level fire effect on horrible accuracy, but somehow I think they wont.

Sometimes I wonder do you actually think what you claim and say, or do you just throw things out from your hats? Ballistic missiles are good to threat enemy, expecially with WMD warheads...but thats pretty much of it.

Finn McCool · Dec 17, 2006

Gollevainen said:
Well thats sounds like in some video game..."I have this ammount of missiles and I fire the there and then the images of airport vannish from the CP screen and I can do other things..."

Well lets do little math, shall we??

The real number of ballistic missiles headed against Taiwan is around 500 missiles. Each missile carries 500 kg warhead so 500x500 is 250 000 kg of TNT to be fielded against Taiwan. It seems big, but lets compare that ammount against normal fire supporting availble to all normal armies...

Lets take a normal chinese group army which consist of 4 divisions (one amoured and 3 infantry) and one artillery division. Thats roughly 576 tubes.
If we count that one "piggie" weights 50 kg, we get the total number of 28 800 kg one firing sortie. 250 000 kg/28 800 kg = 8,6 rounds. So a single group army can put the same ammount of damage than the entire ballistic missile arsenal for just firing 9 times which is really nothing at all.

for example in Tienhaara battles in Karelia ishtmuss in summer 1944 Soviets fired 25 000 grenades (roughly 750 000 Kg of TNT...thats three times the ammunt of entire PLAs ballistic missiles ) into single village...and they didn't even brake the Finnish army defences....and thats with the artillerys accuracy (~25-50 meters CEP)

Perhaps PLA can destry single airport if they want to waste their entire arsenal to accomplish gnat level fire effect on horrible accuracy, but somehow I think they wont.

Sometimes I wonder do you actually think what you claim and say, or do you just throw things out from your hats? Ballistic missiles are good to threat enemy, expecially with WMD warheads...but thats pretty much of it.

Finn is here to help Golly!

Let's take in to consideration that 500 missle number.

For any one BM strike to be effective you would have to fire multiple missles at the target. Now think about how many targets there would be in Taiwan just to target the ROCAF. Miltiary airports, civillian airports, long straight stretches of highway, radars and SAM sites. That list is probably 500 places alone. Now lets expand the list to include other targets like costal defences, government buildings, army and navy bases and command centers. That is hundreds more. So I doubt that the ballistic missles, even with an ideal hit rate, will be able to make much of dent in Taiwan's overall defensive capability. The Second Artillery will have to prioritize what it wants to hit and a lot will have to left off the list. The max number of targets could only be 250 if you want to have any reasonable chance of sucess of hitting them. Now factor in Taiwanese defences. Quite a few (I'm not gonna just pull some figure out of my ass) would be destroyed by SAMs. Others would undoubtedly be fired at decoy targets. And I'm sure just a few would malfunction.

So suddenly, by factoring in the amount of targets and the innaccuracy of a BM and Taiwanese defences, it is very difficult to imagine that BMs will have the effect you describe. And there is usually an AEGIS ship port calling in Taipei.

Back on topic, Scezpan thank you very much for finding that page on the Zubrs. I knew that the PLAN was going to recieve some.

Gollevainen · Dec 17, 2006

Yeas and after this, you dont have any SSMs left. No invasion ever can be done by exhausting ones stocks, never, a principle that shouldn't be overlooked by anyone.

Sczepan · Dec 17, 2006

Gollevainen said:
Well thats sounds like in some video game..."I have this ammount of missiles and I fire the there and then the images of airport vannish from the CP screen and I can do other things..."

Well lets do little math, shall we??

The real number of ballistic missiles headed against Taiwan is around 500 missiles. Each missile carries 500 kg warhead so 500x500 is 250 000 kg of TNT to be fielded against Taiwan. It seems big, but lets compare that ammount against normal fire supporting availble to all normal armies...

......

hyfää iltaa
'urrah - lets assist Golly and Finn

well, somebody here who now the wight of bombs, which was fired to this small Islands, called Kinmen (between 1949 and 1978)???
Kinmen Island is just 2km away from Mainland China and 200km away from Taiwan, but after the civil war in China in 1949, Taiwan has occupied Kinmen Island. At Aug, 23, 1958 PLA artillery began intensive shelling Kinmen Island. This barrage continued for 44 days and (according to german sources

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) and result arround 470.000 "piggies" at this days - much more TNT as the PLA missiles today could carrie against Taiwan, and Kinmen didn't falled ....

Finn McCool · Dec 17, 2006

Sczepan said:
hyfää iltaa
'urrah - lets assist Golly and Finn

well, somebody here who now the wight of bombs, which was fired to this small Islands, called Kinmen (between 1949 and 1978)???
Kinmen Island is just 2km away from Mainland China and 200km away from Taiwan, but after the civil war in China in 1949, Taiwan has occupied Kinmen Island. At Aug, 23, 1958 PLA artillery began intensive shelling Kinmen Island. This barrage continued for 44 days and (according to german sources
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
) and result arround 470.000 "piggies" at this days - much more TNT as the PLA missiles today could carrie against Taiwan, and Kinmen didn't falled ....

The Chinese didn't try to land on Kinmen after the barrage. It was just to harass the Nationalists. However, the Communists did bomb the crap out of Kinmen and then attack it in 1949 and then attack it but were thrown back into the sea. I wrote about this a bit in the "Does Taiwan need an MBT" thread.

I think a better analogy might be the battle of Stalingrad. The Germans had a direct line of sight on the east bank of the River Volga, and air superiority, and shelled it constantly but were not able to stop the flow of supplies across the river.

IDonT · Dec 17, 2006

GOlly and Finn, thanks for getting my back.

Now back to PLAN's amphib capability.

Let's assume that the PLAN land an entire armored division on Taiwan. Now this division, will have to hold a beach head while out numbered. Now the PLA general incharge will have a very interesting choice, as his transport ships returned to port: send in the next wave or send supplies to already landed troops fighting on the beach head.

How long do you think that armored division can last without bullets, fuel, and support against a numerically superior foe?

The current PLAN force does not have the ability to send in the next wave while at the same time providing the already landed force with enough supplies to continue fighting.

This is assuming that no losses to the amphib force are suffered by the PLAN.

tphuang · Dec 18, 2006

Kilo636 said:
That is quite untrue. Ballistic missile is capable of performing mid course correction to achieve CEP even up to 50m.(Ballistic missile with more powerful warhead and greater impact likely to cause damage on airfield and other installation even with 50m CEP)

I think the SRBM can probably do better than 50m CEP, think the DF-5 had 250m CEP back in the 80s. Chinese guidance should've advanced further by now.

Plus with PRC pursuing long range guide multiple rocket like WS-2(Some even can go up to 150km-200km) fit with GPS correction.

WS-2 has a range of 400 km, should be able to strike entire Taiwan. I would think this would be very very useful in any barrage against Taiwan.

800 IRBM is more or less enough to waste all asset of Taiwan Air defense Missile ad free PRC fighter another threat.

you want to hit the fixed targets like shipyards, ports, power stations, airport hangars, and such. Basically trying to criple the C4ISR. If Taiwan moves its SAMs around like the Serbs did, it would be pretty hard to just knock it out.

Also, a lot of this conversation seems to be going on with an assumption that China cannot achieve air superiority over Taiwan. I don't want to go too far into it, but you can guess what my view toward that is.

Finn McCool · Dec 20, 2006

tphuang said:
Also, a lot of this conversation seems to be going on with an assumption that China cannot achieve air superiority over Taiwan. I don't want to go too far into it, but you can guess what my view toward that is.

Well I would say that with the threat of American intervention they would have to mount an invasion inside the window of time I think it would take to gain air superiority. Without that threat, they can take their time.

We need to factor China's helicopter transport abilities into this. They would undoubtedly be used in any Taiwan action.

PLAN Amphibious assault capability

IDonT

Senior Member

Kilo636

Banned Idiot

Gollevainen

Colonel

Finn McCool

Captain

Gollevainen

Colonel

Sczepan

Senior Member

Finn McCool

Captain

IDonT

Senior Member

tphuang

Lieutenant General

Finn McCool

Captain