PLAAF's SAM system unit distribution

T

Totoro

Major
VIP Professional
Here is a map that seems to be depicting locations of all the *known* SAM units (battalion level) of the PLAAF.
whole map orbat circles.jpg

But, notice anything strange? These red circles are showing areas where there is... nothing. No units stationed. And if it was just the big areas in the middle of the China, that wouldn't be strange at all, as why even try to cover every inch of China, since not every inch is important. Plus it'd be too expensive.

But the map clearly shows that even some of the border areas that should be very important to China's defense currently do not have *known* units deployed. I mean, Hainan island without a single PLAAF SAM unit? Considerable stretches of shore close to Taiwan without SAM units? Huge swaths of border near India without SAM units? China's North without SAM units?

So... what is the explanation for that? I've got 2 theories for now.
1. SAM unit deployment areas are just some of the actual deployment areas. And in reality, all those SAM units shift around and are not so bunched up together but are distributed around to cover the gaps on the map.

2. SAM units depicted in the map are just part of the overall SAM force. And in fact there may be several if not a dozen more SAM brigades around China that are missing from this map and missing from the ORBAT found on China defense forum.

Can anyone help? Especially if the answer is number 2 - how would one go about actually learning about the definitive number of SAM brigades? (and possibly their locations)
 
plawolf

plawolf

Lieutenant General
I think PLA fixed position SAM units are primarily intended for defence of key strategic locations and fixed locations rather than intending to present a solid unbroken wall of coverage.

Beyond such fixed locations and assets, there is no benefit to having static SAM sites, especially in the age of stealth.

Pinning your SAMs in place like that just makes it super easy for enemy stealths to plot courses through your radar and missile coverage.

Instead the lion share of Chinese SAM units are on permanent mobile roaming patrol, probably with randomised patrol patterns to avoid allowing adversaries from being able to plot counter routes.

That makes it far harder and more risky to plan surprise penetration sorties since you would have low probability of knowing where PLA mobile SAM units might suddenly decide to set up and start active scanning.
 
T

Totoro

Major
VIP Professional
But isn't it strange (and that's just one of the strange areas) that the entire Hainan island, which is of utmost importance for China,
as it houses a lot of Navy stuff, including boomers is protected by a single HQ-9 site?
That just doesn't make any sense to me.

I agree that it's logical that only important areas are protected, and not necessarily all approaches, but Hainan is the definition of an important area.
One would expect there, at the very least, a whole brigade worth of SAM units.

So, with all that in mind, I do believe there exists a reasonably plausible possibility that there are additional units, be they under PLAAF or PLAN, which have additional HQ-9 or HQ-22 battalions on Hainan. And we simply don't know about them yet.
 
vincent

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
Totoro said:
But isn't it strange (and that's just one of the strange areas) that the entire Hainan island, which is of utmost importance for China,
as it houses a lot of Navy stuff, including boomers is protected by a single HQ-9 site?
That just doesn't make any sense to me.
Click to expand...

There are tons of HQ-9 on the destroyers parked at the Santa naval base
 
S

sndef888

Senior Member
Registered Member
I remember once seeing a much nicer map on twitter listing all the SAM sites complete with the type of SAM


Also, I'm not surprised by the lack of SAM sites in western tibet. It's basically a vast field of nothingness. Probably only a few short range sams in the airfields
 
FairAndUnbiased

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier
Registered Member
sndef888 said:
I remember once seeing a much nicer map on twitter listing all the SAM sites complete with the type of SAM


Also, I'm not surprised by the lack of SAM sites in western tibet. It's basically a vast field of nothingness. Probably only a few short range sams in the airfields
Click to expand...

Tibet itself is air defense.
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The turbulence caused by the mountains and the height of the mountains (14k meters) being higher than the nonpressurized flight ceiling (10k meters) means that planes that try to fly lower than the radar horizon from the subcontinent will just crash, while if they fly high they're easy targets for surface radars.
 
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