quick question about ROCAF

But we have to remember that china has multiple SAM batteries placed across the strait. In the event of a confrontation, it almost appears that neither side (perhaps not even US if involved) will have total air supremacy.

Let us add that ships, like the 052C, are also going to act like floating SAM platforms.

Finn McCool said:

Yeah...I know Taiwan has invested quite a bit in its SAMs. I was mostly saying that they need to connect them and allow them to operate as a network as opposed to individual batteries, as well as protect them so they can survive a ballistic missle barrage and all the other things that would be associated with the beginning of an invasion. A good SAM system (as opposed to individual batteries) makes quite a difference. Look at the Yom Kippur War. It would have been over much quicker, but the Egyptians had a SAM umbrella covering their forces in the Sinai that killed or chased away any Israeli aircraft that entered the area covered by the umbrella. The Egyptian ground forces were able to fortify and repel Israeli counterattacks under this cover. The Israelis had to wait for the Egyptians to make a mistake and come out from under their air cover. This opened a whole in their line that Israeli tank brigades were able to exploit without air cover. My point is that a good SAM system gives you a way to protect your self even if the enemy has air superiority, whihc China would gain quickly considering Taiwan's missle situation. It also gives your ground forces a margin of error and buys them time and breathing space they otherwise would not have if they were vunerable to constant air attack.

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Centralization is not as good as some might think. It makes the entire system brittle and glass jawed. Taking out the central nodes can render the entire web inoperable. That was probably one of the problems of Iraq's KARI.

Proponents of networking should see that the networking should not be used to centralize decision production right in the center, but rather decision making should be decentralized. And while sharing data and operating in concert is always beneficial, a SAM unit should by most part, operate autonomously and redudantly, and makes the assumption that during operation, it would be isolated with no communications.

Hmm...Interesting Crobato. I was thinking that you would want to have a more centralized air defence system in order to concentrate resources on the most important target. For example, there could be 6 Chinese sorties being flown over Taiwan in a given 15 minute period. Two may be attacking a few mostly destroyed airfields, another engaging ROCAF fiighters, and one attacking Taipei, and the 5th, made up of SU-27s and q-5s, attacking Hsiung Feng batteries. You would want to be able to communicate between the batteries to concentrate fire on the valueable enemy aircraft (Su-27s) and protect your most valueable target militarily (the Hsiung Feng batteries.) Basically that is what I am saying; having a centralized system allows you to protect your most valueabale assets and target the most vunerable/valueable enemies.

Taiwan may be a special case though. It has quite a gew different SAM systems, so centralization could cause problems. It is also a small area, and having a central command center may not be necessary, you could just have a somewhat small post, with some radars and radio communications, coordinating at a very basic level, as opposed to a NORAD style gigantic Air Defence Headquarters. Also, Taiwan would be a very target-rich enviroment; most of the PLAAF would be flying over a relatively small area. That could also cause problems. A missle might even lock on to a different target than it was intended to (is that even possible? I think it could happen, especially in a situation like that, but I don't have an expert knowledge of how SAM systems work.)

Ideally, one would have a network which, while each sam component (ranging from patriot sam to chapparal sam and even manpads) would be perfectly able to operate independetly with their own radars/eyeballs, would connect every sensor and every sam/aaa into a single network. It would, however, have to be a peer2peer sort of network, without central nodes, where every element would be in contact with every other element of the network.

Adding to that would be several (a dozen even, if needed) command posts integrated into it, whose sole mission would be to look at the big picture and assign targets to the elements, as they see best fit. While just a single command post should be able to suffice for the whole network, several more should be in the loop for redundancy. Needless to say, those command posts would either have to be very well hidden and/or highly mobile. As any element of the network, really.

If wireless data transfer would not be usable in war conditions, then a vast (and multiple redundant) cable network would have to be put in place all over the country, made out of vast number of short stretches of cable, with connections that would report if their adjacent stretch of cable becomes unoperational. It would provide for quick and easy detecting of the problem and replacement of the cable.

As the final stage - unified guidance methods should be put into place, so any sensor (be it ground/sea/air) in range of the target could guide any sam/airplane thats in range to that target without necessarily relying on the sensor of its own battery/squadron. Technology for that is already here, its a matter of time, money and organization to put it into place. Granted, making up such a network, especially laying so much cable would take years at best, perhaps up to a decade.

crobato said:

Taiwan's SAM systems are pretty impressive. The indigenous systems, the TK-1 and TK-2 is capable of ranging between 90 to 150km, guided by the Chang Bei phased array radar which many have roughly described to be comparable to a land based AEGIS system. The next development is the TK-3 which appears to be based or derived from the Patriot.

The TK-2 is said to use a terminally radar active seeker, coupled with a long ranged infrared seeker for redundancy. They got this dual set up before the SM-3 Standards did.

There are also a number of Patriot, Sparrow and Hawk missile batteries.

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Does Taiwan have any effective means of protecting it's SAM batteries against Chinese ARM's? And does Taiwan have any ARMs of it's own? ARMs are key for either to gain air superiority

Well there's not much you can do to protect a ground target from a air to ground missile once it's been fired, save for shooting it down with other missiles. Of course I would tend to believe that Taiwan's ground based missile batteries are more concerned with shooting down ballistic missiles and aircraft.

Last I heard Taiwan was trying to buy AGM-88 HARMs from the US, however for some reason the US has refused to even give out pricing and availability info.

MIGleader said:

Does Taiwan have any effective means of protecting it's SAM batteries against Chinese ARM's? And does Taiwan have any ARMs of it's own? ARMs are key for either to gain air superiority

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Generally you use decoys. Put microwave emitters on aerials emitting the same frequency as your radar.

A missle might even lock on to a different target than it was intended to (is that even possible? I think it could happen, especially in a situation like that, but I don't have an expert knowledge of how SAM systems work.)

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Generally IFF is supposed to take care of that. Before the missile is ever launched, you should have identification of the aircraft as foe or friendly before you have authorization for launch.

Even after launched, missiles with TVM control like the S-300s, you can still cancel or divert away the missile when it is already on flight. You have full command of the missile from start to finish.

Aircraft can fly in designated zones. You target those that are not within it. Generally you look for the aircraft coming towards the mainland not heading to Taiwan. You may also be able to distinguish aircraft from their radar reflection signatures but it is unlikely you would need to go that far due to the IFF methods.

As for networking, rather than one large centralized network, it would be better to have peer to peer and then clustered over a battle area so a number of SAMs can work in coordination.

It is not wise to attack missile batteries with Q-5s and Su-27s. Su-30MKKs, JH-7s, J-10s, and J-8IIs carrying ARMs would be your predominant SAM suppression force. Given the ranges, it is even possible for FT-2000s launched from the coast to target ground and surface radars within range, as well as enemy AEW or AWACS over the island. I should consider the possibiltiy that FT-2000missiles can easily to be adapted to a naval VLS use like on the 052C, given the HQ-9 connection.

This is also a quantity issue, having enough ARM inventory and delivery platforms to sustain a high intensity suppression campaign.

That leads me to my second question. I know china has around 200 kh-31 ARMs, but is the yj-91 copy in service? Has China finished the reverse engineering process for the missle yet?