Taiwan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Gloire_bb said:

Wars don't start out of blue.
And yes, Taiwan has exactly this kind of aircraft logistic preparations made. It is no secret, they show it off every so often.

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So... What does that mean? ROCAF will anticipate war and start just parking loaded F-16s with pilots sitting in them on the highways waiting for shit to go down? I know they are preparing to launch and recover aircraft by highway, but are they preparing to get their jets to the highway from the air base that has its ground cratered while running from PLAAF jets coming in to finish off all the jets on the ground?

Gloire_bb said:

Check 天弓二， 天弓三
I don't have numbers at hand, Taiwan isn't mmy speciality, but iirc quite a few.
Both are modern 三 is ABM capable.

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Well they'll need way more than quite a few. PRC's got way way more than quite a few.

Gloire_bb said:

Yes, this is it.
It is interesting, though, what Taiwanese stance is shifting, becoming increasingly defensive. Fighters don't contradict it.

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Yes, what is? US weapons purchases don't contradict blindly throwing money at the US for protection either.

manqiangrexue said:

ROCAF will anticipate war and start just parking loaded F-16s with pilots sitting in them on the highways waiting for shit to go down?

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Dispersing=distributing equipment and personnel between secondary and tertiary sites, moving them away from obvious positions, masking them from instrumental reconnaissance or destruction on the ground.
Such plans are invoked at certain threat levels.

manqiangrexue said:

US weapons purchases don't contradict blindly throwing money at the US for protection either.

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I fail to see where their purchases are blind.
These are no arab-style ransoms, when one certain air force buys equal packages of f-15QAs, Rafales and Eurofighters in a short sequence. Airforce which can't even fly over its own airspace properly, for it is just too small.

Gloire_bb said:

Dispersing=distributing equipment and personnel between secondary and tertiary sites, moving them away from obvious positions, masking them from instrumental reconnaissance or destruction on the ground.
Such plans are invoked at certain threat levels.

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Are they dispersing jets onto the highways without actual conflict? That's the point of getting jets off the ground when their airbases are blown. Of course small equipment and personnel can go guerrilla, but fighter jets cannot. They cannot go to the highway and wait because firstly, that shuts down the highway when there's not actually a conflict and secondly, the pilot can't just sit in a jet on the highway and wait for days on out.

Gloire_bb said:

I fail to see where their purchases are blind.
These are no arab-style ransoms, when one certain air force buys equal packages of f-15QAs, Rafales and Eurofighters in a short sequence. Airforce which can't even fly over its own airspace properly, for it is just too small.

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You said the fact that the ROCAF is so invested in fighter jets means that they can get them off the ground to fight. I say that id false because:
1. ROCAF has already demonstrated itself to be extremely incompetent in having its two highest officials both unable to identify a J-20, so assuming they have a really good plan, is not safe.
2. This purchase of jets that can't fly if they are called to fight the PRC could also be explained by a tribute to Uncle Sam for his protection, which would also detract from the circular logic that the ROCAF would only invest so heavily in jets if they were confident they could get them off the ground.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

Oh for goodness sake dude!!

The Radar type we are talking about cannot penetrate the ground or Ocean. So Over the Horizon line of sight of 135 miles is 12,000 feet on the earth. Which is conveniently laid out in my other link the one you deemed as a waste of time.

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You're right. I apologize. I saw that the earth curves downwards by 8 inches per mile and assumed that it is linear, when in fact, it is not. I at first didn't read the first link because I thought it just shows that the earth is curved but now I see it has the 12,000 number in it and that the calculations are not linear. My mistake; it is 12,000 feet.

That said, now we're still here:
https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/taiwan-military-news-reports-data-etc.t3396/page-307#post-558076

manqiangrexue said:

Of course small equipment and personnel can go guerrilla, but fighter jets cannot.

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They can, if it is prepared for.
Again, it's a standart practice. China isn't the first nation who invented shooting at airfields with ballistic missiles.

manqiangrexue said:

1. ROCAF has already demonstrated itself to be extremely incompetent in having its two highest officials both unable to identify a J-20, so assuming they have a really good plan, is not safe.

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Judging force of this size by two talking heads?
Take your opponents seriously, it pays off.

And, btw, judging high ranking officials by their ability to identify LRIP mainland fighter is doubtful.

Gloire_bb said:

They can, if it is prepared for.
Again, it's a standart practice. China isn't the first nation who invented shooting at airfields with ballistic missiles.

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How? Shut down major highways to park fully loaded jets there with pilots sitting inside waiting for a conflict when there is none? The civilians are gonna go mad with all the disruptions. PRC doesn't have to move until they get tired and the pilots are baked half to death in the sun. They'll eventually have to reopen highways and when that happens, game on.

Plus, with satellite imaging, their whereabouts are known, the locations for the backup highways are known and missiles can target all of them right where they sit, jets, highways, air bases, runways; nothing is off limits for missiles.

And even if some do get up in the sky, PLAAF's has got way more jets to handle them with.

Gloire_bb said:

Judging force of this size by two talking heads?
Take your opponrnts seriously, it pays off.

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When this happens to the 2 most important and representative people, yeah, it means something to me. If they found just 1 guy or 2 random small potatoes, I would say that could be a one-off. But both the 2 biggest guys make a mistake that basic? That says a lot.

If you go to a hospital and both the director and the head of cardiac surgery couldn't point out what part is an atrium and what is a ventricle on a picture of the heart, I'd recommend you get transferred but perhaps you'd say that's only 2 guys out of a whole hospital and prefer to give it shot.

Gloire_bb said:

They can, if it is prepared for.
Again, it's a standart practice. China isn't the first nation who invented shooting at airfields with ballistic missiles.

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The use of highways to operate as airbases to support aircraft obviously is not without precedence, and many nations have practiced for it throughout history.

If properly managed before a conflict breaks out it would certainly help to make targeting more difficult compared to if they operated from their own bases.

However the facilities required to rearm and refuel aircraft at points along the highway will remain vulnerable given the airspace would be heavily monitored by PLA AEW&C and air ground surveillance radars. Fighter taking off would naturally be detected as part of normal SOP, and targeting information passed off to air force or rocket forces to be serviced.

Additionally, while highways offer the ability to be more distributed and less obvious targets during a shooting war, the sortie generation rate offered by practical highway airbases will almost certainly be lower than that of a proper functioning air base. Given the need for mobile transport vehicles and/or helicopters to provide resupply of fuel and armament to the ad-hoc highway bases, there will be some firm limits as to just how much of a fraction of the ROCAF's overall fighter fleet could be reasonably expected to operate from highway bases in the first place.

Still, highway bases are definitely a useful option to preserve some level of fighter capability in event of a conflict, and I imagine fighters deployed there would be a better sortie rate than operating from their normal fixed airbases...
Whether it's "enough"... well it's similar to the F-16V question.

manqiangrexue said:

You are implying that the F-22 has a superior LPI radar than the J-20? Needs evidence very very badly.

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No, I am saying that the J-20's radar has a larger antenna aperture than the APG-77. This is based on rumors and eyeballing the radome cross-section. The downside of that is a larger RCS, all else being the same.

manqiangrexue said:

Ohhhhhh there's no confirmation from the PLA what tint it was so maybe it's just an anti-glare tint like on commercial jets, right? LOL And the prototypes didn't have that because who cares about pilot vision on prototypes? The reason you saw the tint on some and not other production aircraft is because the tint doesn't look the same from all angles to the sun. They're not picking which ones get it and which ones don't because they don't have enough tint material, ok? LOL For you to sit here and imply that China can't tint glass is really beyond a waste of time.

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I've looked at dozens upon dozens of photos of units since the one of 2017 first showed up, and I haven't seen anything comparable to it. I asked this on the J-20 thread. The answer was that they must have invented a new, transparent material. At best I could see a film like interference pattern on the canopy, not unlike the coating you see on airliners.

Brumby said:

I suggest you take a bit more effort in outlining your question. I am incapable of understanding between huh? and a truncated sentence,

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you originally posted this Yesterday at 2:06 PM
:

Brumby said:

Those kind of events will transpire whether the F-16 is upgraded to V or not. They are therefore superfluous to the conversation.

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to which I reacted Yesterday at 7:21 AM with
:

Jura said:

oh there would be events even before Continental China preempted Taiwan: Continental China would've sent agents and small groups of SF to join with Taiwanese fifth columnist, and hit grids; communications; gates (or deeper) of military bases; and so on

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, to get this reaction from you Yesterday at 2:06 PM
:

Brumby said:

Those kind of events will transpire whether the F-16 is upgraded to V or not. They are therefore superfluous to the conversation.

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that led me to begin with an exclamation Yesterday at 11:45 PM
:

Jura said:

huh?
Today at 7:21 AM
I quoted this post of yours:

containing no mention of "F-16"

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as I don't know what F-16s you meant, and I have no idea why you brought them up while quoting my post which described an irregular warfare on the ground; please elaborate

Max Demian said:

No, I am saying that the J-20's radar has a larger antenna aperture than the APG-77. This is based on rumors and eyeballing the radome cross-section. The downside of that is a larger RCS, all else being the same.

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By antenna aperture, you mean the cross-sectional area of the nose with the radome removed? Yeah, larger that could possibly diminish stealth, but that largely depends upon the materials and design of the radome. What it absolutely leads to is room for a larger, more powerful/capable radar, so if there was a small sacrifice in stealth for a vastly superior radar, that's going to be a compromise made. And whether there was a sacrifice or the size of that sacrifice will depend so much on radome design. You certainly cannot point to a slightly larger newer jet and conclude that that represents a larger RCS over a slightly smaller much older jet.

Max Demian said:

I've looked at dozens upon dozens of photos of units since the one of 2017 first showed up, and I haven't seen anything comparable to it. I asked this on the J-20 thread. The answer was that they must have invented a new, transparent material. At best I could see a film like interference pattern on the canopy, not unlike the coating you see on airliners.

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So there you go, as I was also suspecting, a reduction in tint most likely means they've found superior material/technique to tint for RCS. I didn't know about this; I just thought it was the angle of the light making a tint look like no tint. Certainly, it is not logical to conclude that the tint observed on 2017 was removed leading to production models that are inferior and have no RCS countermeasures on the canopy.

So why did you bring this up in a "F-22 canopy certainly has tint; looks like J-20 doesn't, so probably not as stealthy" kind of suggestion? You had this conversation already on the J-20 forum.