PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

[plawolf]

i do wonder how practical that is in real life. lets say war starts, whatever missile or himars isnt going to just magically find their designated parking garage emptied of any vehicles that they will just be able to quickly hide into with whatever ammo. Also assuming they do get there, and remain undetected, what is the control measure to determine when they would come out to shoot? note that this will have to happen simultaneously with multiple launchers dispersed throughout the island, coordinating that kind of fire is a lot more than just typing on whatsapp "ok guys come out and shoot".

the other question being, what do you do after firing? if it is assumed that launcher location is compromised after firing, then it will have to move...again along with all the support vehicles etc. all of this seems not very well put together, a lot of things will have to go right for this to work and that doesnt tend to happen in a warzone.

Add to that the fact that in the event of actual war, the urban roads are going to be absolutely gridlocked with panicked civilian traffic. If their brilliant plan is to hide out in the cities, they may well find whole columns neatly lined up for the PLA while snarled in the traffic jam from hell.

Trying to move military convoys in cities is also going to expose them to countless civilian eyes, and everyone has a cell phone with a camera these days. They will be lucky their progress isn’t live streamed by half the city.

This is why the smart money has Taiwan stationing their HIMARs in the mountains, away from people where they have a better chance of keeping their location a secret so the PLA doesn’t wipe them all with the first strike wave.

Being in the mountains also presents challenges for HIMARs in terms of mobility and suitable firing positions.

 

[Zhejiang]

Well it's not about "modern" systems or not. The IDF needed to neutralize Hamas as a fighting force, because that's really what it's about.

The specifics are also quite similar as well. Gaza is an urban jungle with extensive underground fortifications. The entire area is almost like one giant bunker with mazes built into it. The IDF's challenge was having persistent ISR to shut down pop-up threats from Hamas's rockets and counter-attacks which could pop up essentially anywhere in Gaza.

This is very similar to the challenge PLA will be facing in Taiwan. On top of that, unlike the IDF, Taiwan is full of people and areas that PRC does not want to destroy or kill. Gaza is still useful here because it's really, the perfect example of how challenging it is to manage large masses of hostile people, while trying to kill fighters and war material hiding amongst them. Which will almost certainly be the case in any Taiwan scenario.

Now the reason I want to shy away from Ukraine and Iran is because the challenge there is completely different. Both Iran and Ukraine are far too large to have persistent ISR on 24/7. They're also far more sophisticated and have far greater magazine depth than Hamas. The mission therefore, for both Russia and IDF, is less about 24/7 ISR and Scud hunting, then it is about air defense.

I.E. in the Iran and Ukraine case, the IDF and Russia have to worry about hardening their critical nodes and attriting misisle volleys, as well as finding ways to paralyze the enemy's ability to fight. It's much close to "peer-conflict".

Whereas in a Gaza or Taiwan scenario you're not fighting a peer. You're really, managing an insurgency within a far smaller geographic area.

Yes, I take your point that Taiwan is, likely, much more capable than Hamas, but China is also much more capable than IDF. The assymetries between the two belligerents are just too big. It's a different kind of war.

It is a different kind of war and yes there are imporant lessons to take from like you mentioned but I think there are far more lessons to take from Ukraine than HAMAS and Israel and ISR 24/7 over Gaza is far more easier than it will be over Taiwan, GAZA is 141 square miles and have basically nothing to prevent ISR, Taiwan is 13,976 square miles and have weapons that can prevent ISR. But I do agree with some of your points here but I still think Ukraine provides far more lessons to learn than HAMAS does.

 

[latenlazy]

Add to that the fact that in the event of actual war, the urban roads are going to be absolutely gridlocked with panicked civilian traffic. If their brilliant plan is to hide out in the cities, they may well find whole columns neatly lined up for the PLA while snarled in the traffic jam from hell.

Trying to move military convoys in cities is also going to expose them to countless civilian eyes, and everyone has a cell phone with a camera these days. They will be lucky their progress isn’t live streamed by half the city.

This is why the smart money has Taiwan stationing their HIMARs in the mountains, away from people where they have a better chance of keeping their location a secret so the PLA doesn’t wipe them all with the first strike wave.

Being in the mountains also presents challenges for HIMARs in terms of mobility and suitable firing positions.

The central problem with all these potential countermeasures for ROCA to operate their rocket artillery is that they all significantly degrade attack cadence and without sufficient attack cadence you’re not really inflicting the kind of damage you’d need to to make amphibious landing for the PLA thorny. The win for the PLA here doesn’t rest on whether they can destroy all the launchers but whether they can suppress them to the point where they’re not a meaningful resistance factor.

 

[simonov]

Like russia China will defeat teh ROCA ATACMS easily by jam their GPS

 

[vincent]

What is HIMARS/ATACMS really suitable for? It can try to hit targets on the mainland, but there will be a high chance of interception. It is not accurate enough to hit moving sea targets. Again, basically to launch at any PLA beachhead and probably be wiped off the board after.

I bet ROCA will use them as terror weapons against civilians.

 

[drowingfish]

The central problem with all these potential countermeasures for ROCA to operate their rocket artillery is that they all significantly degrade attack cadence and without sufficient attack cadence you’re not really inflicting the kind of damage you’d need to to make amphibious landing for the PLA thorny. The win for the PLA here doesn’t rest on whether they can destroy all the launchers but whether they can suppress them to the point where they’re not a meaningful resistance factor.

This is correct. the point I wanted to make previously was that the C2 of dispersed launchers is a challenge even in peacetime. Taiwan dreamt up of this perfect scenario where they are going to get really good intel on the location, vector and intent of PLA's main amphibious flotilla, and get all of their launchers out just in time to launch their salvo simultaneously. The reality is none of those elements are easy to achieve. to be successful requires a robust network of sensors and HQ, but they would be quite vulnerable to PLA's attack.

 

[HighGround]

Like russia China will defeat teh ROCA ATACMS easily by jam their GPS

This is understated honestly.

ATACMS is old tech, already reliably degraded by Russian air defenses. Assuming, and I think its safe to assume, that Russia and China will share this type of intelligence, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that ATACMS penetration rate will be quite low if it penetrates at all.

 

[RoastGooseHKer]

If the ROCA is hiding their rocket artillery in caves they can’t form defensive lines to prevent the landing, and the areas they could emerge from would be monitored 24-7, while every known exit point would be constantly hammered by bunker busters or road strikes. Any successful launch meanwhile would give away any exits that aren’t already known, and Taiwan only has so many of them. This is what Israel did to Iran, and Iran had way more mountain fortifications to hide their strike positions than Taiwan does. This is not really a workable counter. Furthermore, it’s not even clear what the ROCA could use to guide their rocket artillery fires if they lose their air control and radars.

Even if the US weren’t directly involved, it would surely provide targeting info via satellite the same way it did with Ukraine’s HIMARS targeting Russians.

 

[enroger]

There are only so many hardened positions capable of housing HIMARS and it's ammo stockpile, it would be worthwhile to pre-emptively destroy those positions with large munitions before hand (or at least collapse entrances in the case of caves, underground structures, tunnels...etc), including civilian ones. As I said the number of targets that fit this criteria would not be too high so this is feasible.

Apart from hardened positions the enemy will also attempt to hide them among civilian infrastructures or places like schools or hospitals. Intelligence gathering and ISR is the most important factor. It goes without saying PLA will gain air-superiority and have persistent air recon along with satellites and human intelligence for this.

 

[TheWanderWit]

Are they? 093Bs are still only as good as 688is in most speed regime and the US has extensive sensor networks all around from their coasts to continental shelf and even in open ocean.

Also, I somehow doubt 093Bs have 24 VLS. The most we've seen is 12 in the open, there isn't really enough space forward of that section to contain another 12 without being right against the sail and the panel aft isn't long enough to fit another 12 VLS unit. IMO, at most It's 12+9 and worst It's 12.

They do have 24 VLS as seen from satellite imagery.