Taiwan Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

FangYuan said:

The Taiwanese know that, but...

The distance between Taipei and China's Three Gorges Dam is 1,200 kilometers.
YunFeng range: 1500 Km.

The probability that YunFeng can destroy the Three Gorges Dam is almost zero, but China cannot ignore this threat.

For Taiwan's long-range MLRS (if they have it in the future), China needs systems similar to iron domes and continues to upgrade the LD-2000

Click to expand...

Even attempting to go for the Three Gorges dam will only see everyone remotely responsible lined up against a wall once China takes over. It’s literally suicide to try it, with essentially zero chance of success, so no deterrent power at all.

Besides, straight line distances doesn’t matter for cruise missiles. Not if they want any remote chance of getting to their target.

The only defence a cruise missile have is in flying low and hugging the terrain. That means you can easily need to fly many times the straight line distance to get to a target.

The only way these missiles can reach the TGD is if they ignored terrain and fly straight and high. Chinese target drones would be harder to intercept.

plawolf said:

They would honestly be better off copying the mainland and developing very long range MLRS instead.

Click to expand...

They use more or less the same size of the launcher, and consequently can be dispersed and hidden to a similar degree.
In some cases, these can literally be the very same modular launchers.

ILikeChina said:

They can have. But who cares about the few missiles? Mainland has thousands.

Click to expand...

It doesn't work this way. At least not for those who expect to be shot at, and would rather not.

Gloire_bb said:

They use more or less the same size of the launcher, and consequently can be dispersed and hidden to a similar degree.
In some cases, these can literally be the very same modular launchers.

Click to expand...

The launcher is the least relevant thing to consider. It is just a glorified HGV.

In all the areas that actually matter, like number of rounds that can realistically be made and fielded; launch times; projectile flight times; projectile speed and difficulty to intercept; target relevance etc, 2-300km ranges MLRS trumps cruise missiles any day if the week.

Developing these cruise missiles is literally copy pasting Hilter’s failed strategy of pursing tactically meaningless and strategically irrelevant hyper expensive vengeance weapons at the expense of more practical but less showy battlefield systems that might have had a chance to make a meaningful difference.

FangYuan said:

The Taiwanese know that, but...

The distance between Taipei and China's Three Gorges Dam is 1,200 kilometers.
YunFeng range: 1500 Km.

The probability that YunFeng can destroy the Three Gorges Dam is almost zero, but China cannot ignore this threat.

For Taiwan's long-range MLRS (if they have it in the future), China needs systems similar to iron domes and continues to upgrade the LD-2000

Click to expand...

It doesn't stand a chance of even scratching 3 gorges. It is made of steel reinforced concrete. That is at 10 km range.

A cruise missile is not armored or armor piercing. How big of a deal is that? Well, here is what a kamikaze plane hit looks like after hitting a WW2 era battleship HMS Sussex. The plane was a Mitsubishi Zero.



= 0.0254 meters or 1500x thinner than Three Gorges at the thinnest point where there isn't even any water. If an entire plane hit can't even scratch WW2 battleships then what hope does a relatively small missile with no armor piercing have of scratching 40-100 m of steel reinforced concrete?

plawolf said:

In all the areas that actually matter, like number of rounds that can realistically be made and fielded; launch times; projectile flight times; projectile speed and difficulty to intercept; target relevance etc, 2-300km ranges MLRS trumps cruise missiles any day if the week.

Click to expand...

You're basically comparing two ways of delivery. One is through a rapid-burning solid-fuel rocket engine(oxidizer mixed in, low Isp) and ballistic(=lofted) trajectory.
Another one is through turbofan(atmospheric air for oxidizer, very high Isp) on a vehicle with a plane-like lift to drag ratio.

Both are right for their specific situations.

Gloire_bb said:

You're basically comparing two ways of delivery. One is through a rapid-burning solid-fuel rocket engine(oxidizer mixed in, low Isp) and ballistic(=lofted) trajectory.
Another one is through turbofan(atmospheric air for oxidizer, very high Isp) on a vehicle with a plane-like lift to drag ratio.

Both are right for their specific situations.

Click to expand...

a turbofan would not have the speed to hit through 40 m of reinforced concrete. Even an entire plane crashing into a mere 1 inch carbon steel plate doesn't even scratch the plate, just leaves a plane shaped burn mark. 40+ m of reinforced concrete is just impossible to deal with. During wartime, you can even plate the entire dry side with cheap steel plates bonded to the concrete so the concrete doesn't even get a scratch.

a ballistic missile flies high and can be shot down, and would be hitting topside. To do any damage from a topside angle it has to penetrate further than the distance between the water line and the top of the dam. The waterline is 175 m elevation, dam is 181 m tall, so they need to penetrate 6 m before doing any damage whatsoever. The dam can be drained up to 30 m safely.

The absolute heaviest bunker busting dumb bomb can only penetrate 6 m. Let's say an IRBM can deliver that (despite being 5000 kg, 10x more than even the most advanced IRBMs can carry), and due to speed can penetrate 6x that at 36 meters... It still doesn't do any damage with safe drainage. What happens if 1 inch steel plate is laid on top and buried under asphalt? Then it penetrates even less.

Conclusion: there is literally nothing they can do to the dam even if uncontested, and it won't be uncontested.

FairAndUnbiased said:

a turbofan would not have the speed to hit through 40 m of reinforced concrete.

Click to expand...

I wasn't talking about 3 gorges, just talking engines (for different means of delivery of payload).

Don't really want to talk about genocidal ideas w/o proper reason (which destruction of 3 gorges very clearly is). I have friends downstream.

Gloire_bb said:

I wasn't talking about 3 gorges, just talking engines (for different means of delivery of payload).

Don't really want to talk about genocidal ideas w/o proper reason (which destruction of 3 gorges very clearly is). I have friends downstream.

Click to expand...

they floated that idea first. this is illustrate how attempting to do so will likely fail, and draw extreme countermeasures for the attempt.

Gloire_bb said:

You're basically comparing two ways of delivery. One is through a rapid-burning solid-fuel rocket engine(oxidizer mixed in, low Isp) and ballistic(=lofted) trajectory.
Another one is through turbofan(atmospheric air for oxidizer, very high Isp) on a vehicle with a plane-like lift to drag ratio.

Both are right for their specific situations.

Click to expand...

Sorry but what kind of pedantic jibber jabber is this? That’s the same as saying a paper clip and a tactical nuke are both right for their specific situations.

Not technically wrong but entirely beside the point and irrelevant to what is being discussed.

If you don’t have anything pertinent to add, you can always, you know, not add a comment.

plawolf said:

Sorry but what kind of pedantic jibber jabber is this? That’s the same as saying a paper clip and a tactical nuke are both right for their specific situations.

Click to expand...

Because that you said about MLRS over cruise missiles shows your fundamental lack of understanding of both. Which is important, because it alone would've quite clearly explained to you, why did they go with the LACM option.

p.s. the shortest range where cruise missile with proper airbreathing engine makes sense is currently around ~100 km.