China's SCS Strategy Thread
- Thread starter lilzz
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Any paracel outpost is much less useful than a spratly one. The spratlys are pretty much in the middle of the scs and provides much greater range to chinese planes and ships
Wrong.
The Xisha/Paracel Islands are located about 340 kilometers southeast of the closest major PLA bases on Hainan. From there, it's about 625 kilometers away to Huangyan/Scarborough Shoal to the east and about 750 kilometers away to the Nansha/Spratly Islands to the southeast.
Without Xisha, Sanya is about 1080 kilometers away from Nansha and is about 940 kilometers away from Huangyan. That's a massive distance to cover in one go - And we haven't talked about going south to Singapore (and the Malacca Strait/Sunda Strait).
In retrospect, Xisha basically acts like an extension of Sanya (and the Chinese mainland) by acting as a forward staging base for the PLA and CCG forces originating from Hainan and/or the mainland to refuel, resupply, and recuperate before proceeding to frontline bases and/or mission zones located further east, southeast, and south. In addition, Xisha is also capable of acting as a backup base in case something majorly terrible occurred at those frontline bases and/or mission zones, where immediate support/reinforcements are required. Xisha could be seen as a hub for cross-island travel for the PLA and CCG.
Furthermore, Xisha's location also means that PLA warplanes that are damaged during combat operations can have a relatively closer location to conduct emergency landings (and if that's not possible, ditching and be situated closer to rescue efforts). This is also essentially what Iwo Jima was back during the Pacific War.
Last-but-not-least - In case Huangyan and/or Nansha are lost, there's still the Xisha to fall back to. If Xisha is lost, then Sanya becomes the frontline.
So, no - The Xisha/Paracel Islands are actually just as equally important as the Nansha/Spratly Islands (if not some more).
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Latest Antelope Reef
A few things to add onto this.
The Guancha gang actually mentioned at one point that it's harder to exert influence over Scarborough Shoal than over the Spratly Islands, precisely because Scarborough is much farther from a major base.
The lagoon area in the Paracel Islands is quite small, especially compared with the lagoon at Mischief Reef. This matters because lagoon space is important for harbouring ships. Of course this situation will see a big change with Antelope Reef.
I would also argue that the Spratly Islands are still far from full utilization. As a result, the cost benefit analysis is different.
antiterror13
Brigadier
awesome, do you now the date photo taken?Latest Antelope Reef
It's all about the VP impeachment, since a majority of the Senators are Pro Duterte. They will use the ICC and flood control corruption charges to lessen, their numbers. The magic number is 16 votes, if 8 senator are arrested from various charge from the original 24, then 8 votes is enough to impeach her
From the lack of tire marks on the runway, it seems like the SCS air bases barely ever gets used. There doesn't seem to be any fighter or otherwise brigades based in any of the SCS islands, it just seems like every few months or so a brigade gets temporary rotated here for a few days or weeks before leaving.
This does seem to follow the rumors that PLAAF/PLAN is having trouble basing aircraft long term on these islands due to proximity to the sea. Though I don't really agree with the claims that the operating environment on these islands is somehow worse than on carriers, so IMO it may be possible to base naval air brigades on these islands in the future.