PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

[Sinnavuuty]

I do have a question about this. If you look at the DF-15/16/17 batteries deployed against Taiwan and Okinawa and the DF-26s against Guam and the 2nd Island Chain, the number of missiles is in the low thousands. There are also only 200+ DF-26s that could be launched in one salvo (don’t know how many is storage and ready to reload). Wouldn’t China also be a huge risk of running out of missiles critical in sustaining fire after the initial few waves of strikes? This is not countering how many BMs would be lost to interceptors and malfunction under realistic scenarios. But if you look at Iranian strikes against Israel, most SRBMs simply don’t make it to their targets. MRBMs and BMs with penetration aid have higher chances, but only higher chances. That is to say most older BMs like DF-15s and DF-11s will likely be intercepted.

Sorry no expert here on missile salvos, but the Iranian strikes against Israel and Russian strikes against Ukraine seem pretty futile when. The defending side has advanced air defense.

The priority targets would be radars and C2 structures to prevent a reaction to subsequent attacks. Iran lacked the precision to attack these facilities and targets; furthermore, they lack ISR systems to validate each target.

So even if some are intercepted at the beginning of hostilities, removing the ability to track and locate subsequent waves makes penetration easier for later attacks.

The positive side for China is that its potential enemies do not have a missile force like the PLARF, so fire suppression would not be necessary; there are fewer target points to cover in the first waves of attack, allowing them to focus exclusively on the C2 network and radars.

 

[Sinnavuuty]

US doctrine is to use broadband stealth aircraft (such as the B-2, B-21 and the RQ-180)

How successful this would be, is another question.

You know the worst part?

They foresee the use of these assets to hunt TELs within mainland China, as if a PLAAF didn't exist.

 

[Wrought]

You know the worst part?

They foresee the use of these assets to hunt TELs within mainland China, as if a PLAAF didn't exist.

The theoretical doctrine is fine. Standoff munitions (air-launched or otherwise) allow you to prosecute targets without air superiority. The problems are all in the practical implementation. Massing enough aircraft and/or fires, generating enough sorties, absorbing acceptable attrition, and so forth.

 

[Gloire_bb]

You know the worst part?

They foresee the use of these assets to hunt TELs within mainland China, as if a PLAAF didn't exist.

Quite up to debate what attrition rate v deep VLO HALE drones is actually achievable, PLAAF or not(and how exhausting attrition rate v non- deep VLO spam is).

It's one thing to sustain attrition of heavy bombers (though again, we just don't have data points). Drones are another.

 

[Sinnavuuty]

The theoretical doctrine is fine. Standoff munitions (air-launched or otherwise) allow you to prosecute targets without air superiority. The problems are all in the practical implementation. Massing enough aircraft and/or fires, generating enough sorties, absorbing acceptable attrition, and so forth.

Even theoretical doctrine is limited in realistic operational planning. For example, employing 20-30 B-21s, each carrying at least 30 SiAW missiles, as a coordinated attack could neutralize around 900 launchers, in the best sense of the "shoot the archer, not the arrow" doctrine.

SiAW missiles can reach Mach 3 (or 4) with a range of 300 km and will be the missiles used against time-critical targets at short range, launched by stealth aircraft within the enemy's anti-aircraft fire control zone.

Missiles against time-critical targets launched from outside the enemy's anti-aircraft fire control zone will be the hypersonic HACM and AGM-183 missiles with a maximum range of over 1000 km, which can be launched from conventional (non-stealth) bombers and fighters.

Believe me, this is what they are trying to claim as US operational planning.

 

[AndrewS]

Even theoretical doctrine is limited in realistic operational planning. For example, employing 20-30 B-21s, each carrying at least 30 SiAW missiles, as a coordinated attack could neutralize around 900 launchers, in the best sense of the "shoot the archer, not the arrow" doctrine.

SiAW missiles can reach Mach 3 (or 4) with a range of 300 km and will be the missiles used against time-critical targets at short range, launched by stealth aircraft within the enemy's anti-aircraft fire control zone.

Missiles against time-critical targets launched from outside the enemy's anti-aircraft fire control zone will be the hypersonic HACM and AGM-183 missiles with a maximum range of over 1000 km, which can be launched from conventional (non-stealth) bombers and fighters.

Believe me, this is what they are trying to claim as US operational planning.

I see that the SiAW is developed from the AGM-88G AARGM-ER, which costs between $1.4-$3.7 Mn

So we could expect the SiAW to be significantly more expensive.

And the SiAW should be straightforward for a medium-range SAM system such as the HQ-16 to shoot down, and the HQ-16 missiles are significantly cheaper (I expect <$1 Million)

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The other issue is that opposing aircraft can't operate during the daytime

 

[GulfLander]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2001133283170771382

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https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2001121469708034174

 

[plawolf]

You don’t only launch salvos of high value missiles when you do your strike campaigns. You start with low value missiles first to exhaust interceptor capacity, and then when you launch your high value salvos you include more complementary lower value missiles to exhaust simultaneous engagement bandwidths. Lower value missiles being intercepted is the whole point because interceptor volumes are not infinite.

Iran’s salvo volumes were suppressed by Israeli air superiority and Iran still managed to both erase Israel’s air defenses into a nub in a week as well as deplete a notable share of the US’s own interceptor stock. That’s why the US had to step in when they did, because if they didn’t Iran was about to go open season on Israel, even with maybe half to 2/3rd of their strike complex being disabled or suppressed.

Russia meanwhile doesn’t have the same volume strike complex that Iran has (or at least they didn’t at the start of the war), and are actually not as well trained for mass strike warfare (though that might be changing), and has to expend their strike capacity across a much wider geography, while Ukraine can get constant replenishment of air defense capacity via its western land link with the rest of Europe.

China has a significantly larger and more diverse strike complex than either Iran or Russia, that are far better protected and thus less exposed to suppression or attrition, all concentrated on a significantly smaller set of target areas than Ukraine. Meanwhile, neither the US nor Taiwan can replenish their interceptor capacity at rates that can resist rapid attrition like Ukraine can because their air defense positions are all either stuck on islands or floating at sea.

In short, there is a hard math between defensive salvo volumes vs offensive salvo volumes. That’s what determines the results of engagements in modern strike warfare.

You are still treating Chinese strike capabilities far too much like Iran’s.

Even Iranian ballistic missiles were giving the best the west has to offer major headaches and breaches when it comes to ABM over Israel, and those Iranian missiles were basically equivalent to stuff the PLA has already, or are in the process of retiring.

The Ukrainians have also had pretty abysmal intercept rates against Russian Islanders and Kinzhals, which are at least a generation or two behind the latest hypersonics the PLA are fielding.

China doesn’t need to play the saturation and attrition route as it has weapons that opfor defences have minimal chances of successfully intercepting. So it can use those high end weapons to punch holes in opfor air defences, command structures and core assets to disable or at least massively degrade opfor defensive capabilities and intercept rates against cheap low tier weapons.

 

[AndrewS]

You have been conflating peace time with war time. There isn't going to be any chance to complete large naval vessels in modern war environment, as they will be the first to get bombed. If you couldn't see alternatives other than a futile exercise, then you should broaden your horizon.

As Patch pointed out in 2022, the US is unable to generate sufficient fires to penetrate the IADS in mainland China.

Plus the scenario assumption is that China is militarily dominant in the Western Pacific, but can't reach past.
And that the US can't reach into the Western Pacific, but is militarily dominant elsewhere

You can debate whether such a scenario is relevant today, in 5 years time, or 10 years time, but it is almost certain to be the balance of power at some point.

So perhaps you can suggest an alternative course of action in such a scenario.

WWII is irrelevant, which is why your hypothese make no sense. Manufacturing process today is magnitudes with an "S" more complex than back then.

This statement is incorrect.

Heavy manufacturing is fundamentally a complicated process rather than a complex one.
And since WW2, it has only become more complicated, and less complex

1. We now have digital models for the shipyards, the ships and their components.
2. Inspection technology is way better than back in WW2 and robots can reliably repeat operations

So you can put in place rules, systems and processes, so that it becomes a complicated (but manageable) process.

Here's an old example of welding with robots with the Virginia SSNs, so I expect the situation in China to be far more advanced today.

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Gavekal Research states that Chinese shipyard workers are 3x more productive than in America.

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EDIT. We can also use airliners as an example. Since the 1970s, airliners have gotten more complicated. But production times have gone down substantially.

Point 1 is complete nonsense. Having machines for quality assurance doesn't magically improve people's abilities. When skills of the labour are not up to par, all the machines will do is say the work have failed qualtiy checks, which means no actual work got done. Furthermore, the machines themselves add another layer of complexity as the operators need to be trained as well to be able to identify false positives and false negatives.

As for point 2, automation can't keep up with manufacturing complexity. That's why things take longer to built despite advancement in automation.

That is incorrect.

Look at what is happening in the automobile industry for example.

1. Automation is substantially reducing production timelines.
2. Granted, cars are smaller than ships, but cars can be used a proxy for the components that make up ship modules.

Any process can be automated, but the question is whether the upfront initial cost and time is worth it. For aircraft carriers which are only built once every 5 years and are essentially unique one-off builds, it's not feasible.

But if you have a construction programme which assumes significant numbers of identical ships , it is worth developing the automation, then implementing this everywhere.

Nope. An aircraft carrier is not a facemask. The bottlenecks lie with people and there is no way to get around other than slow grind of 10 years, even at China speed. 10 years estimate is actually optimistic, because it didn't factor in social factors.

I feel this is just cope now. "Social factors" are the bottleneck in China expanding shipbuilding in a wartime scenario?