PLA strike strategies in westpac HIC

[tphuang]

Your position is contradictory. You entertain the possibility that in the future the PLA will be able to resoundingly defeat the US Pacific force while suffering tolerable losses (75% of the PLA force intact with 100% of the US force wiped out) and to do it with such speed and ferocity that Chinese industry suffers minimal to no damage. From your lips to God's ears is all I can say to that. Amen.

But why wouldn't the PLA destroy forward deployed US nuclear weapons along with the rest of the US force? Either the US withdraws these weapons or they are captured/destroyed by the PLA in the ensuing rout. If they're on submarines, then the PLAN will pop those subs or they'll withdraw to US waters.

I don't think you understand how quiet USN subs are.

It would be so if this policy were a substitute for conventional overmatch rather than a supplement. China isn't North Korea (or the US for that matter) to rely on nuclear weapons to make up for conventional deficiencies. If China's conventional forces are strong enough and properly postured, then the US won't have the capacity to overmatch China with tactical nukes.

There's also another component to this that I don't discuss because it'll run afoul of the forum's rules (which is an indictment of the forum's rules that they constrain discussion of strategy). I've mentioned only China's response vis-à-vis the US homeland in response to strikes on Chinese industry; I think you can imagine what I advocate China do to countries like Japan who host US assets used to strike soft Chinese targets.

Any base in Japan that hosts USAF forces will be subject to Chinese bombardment. Through much of the discussions here, we have assumed that H-20 and ballistic missiles will likely be used to overwhelm US bases in Guam, Okinawa as well as other parts of Japan.

I don't even know what to say to this. If China suffers a major defeat in war then it's the end of human life on Earth. It's not China's lot in life to rebuild itself every time some imperialist scum prey on it. If anybody's going to be rebuilding, it's them.

Germany lost WWII and have been the strongest power in Europe for 40 years.
Japan lost WWII and had been the strongest power in Asia for 25 years until China eclipsed them.
If China loses a war, it won't nearly be as devastating as those countries. It will be fine. We are but a small point in the long history. A temporary setback is nothing in the 5000 years of Chinese civilization.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

I don't think you understand how quiet USN subs are.

I don't think you understand how capable PLAN ASW already is and how much more capable it's going to be in the coming decade.

Any base in Japan that hosts USAF forces will be subject to Chinese bombardment. Through much of the discussions here, we have assumed that H-20 and ballistic missiles will likely be used to overwhelm US bases in Guam, Okinawa as well as other parts of Japan.

I haven't been clear enough in what I'm trying to get at. What you said isn't what I'm talking about, that's normal warfare. If Chinese military industry suffers enough damage that my proposed threshold is crossed, part of the response is China attacks US military-industrial targets on the US mainland with tactical nuclear weapons. Let's just say that there's no Japan left at the end of the other part.

Germany lost WWII and have been the strongest power in Europe for 40 years.
Japan lost WWII and had been the strongest power in Asia for 25 years until China eclipsed them.
If China loses a war, it won't nearly be as devastating as those countries. It will be fine. We are but a small point in the long history. A temporary setback is nothing in the 5000 years of Chinese civilization.

China doesn't lose, that's the Prime Axiom. China. Does. Not. Lose.

Germany and Japan are flunkies that the US deigned to allow some freedom because it needed them against the Soviet Union. They're still dogs on a leash - I do not want that to be China's fate, nor should anyone who considers themselves sympathetic to China in the least. A US-China war isn't some playfight between kin like the US's war on Germany. It isn't even a war against a hated race like the US's war on Japan. It is The End. It's either the end of US hegemony or the end of the species.

I understand that you might be an American and you don't want Chinese nuclear missiles raining down on you. But that isn't the perspective I take on this. The best way to ensure your safety is for America to dissolve its alliances with Japan, South Korea, et al. and withdraw from the western Pacific - then there needn't be any war.

 

[The Observer]

I just stumbled into this thread, but I think it's about time this thread is locked for a while to cool heads down. @ZeEa5KPul Calling annihilation of humanity preferable to the US winning a hypothetical war with China that involves nukes is NOT cool. You can discuss a lot of things, but that level of warmongering is too much.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

Using tactical nuclear weapons on the home soil of a nuclear nation is, and will remain, an action that will be considered rapidly escalatory on the path of general nuclear escalation.

There's a point I missed making in my first response to you: Why does the US feel that striking soft Chinese targets - or even any Chinese targets on the mainland (after all, that's the home soil of a nuclear-armed nation) - is either not escalatory or an escalation it can make with impunity? Is destroying JNCX fine if done with RDX rather than plutonium?

There's a core philosophical difference I have with people I argue this with, and I'll state upfront that almost no one agrees with my position - I think the scale of destruction is what determines escalatory potential, not the physics of the weapons employed to achieve that destruction. Viewed from this angle, nuclear weapons across the spectrum of yields become an integrated part of warfighting, not just a totemic deterrent whose use is dismissed from the realm of possibility.

Another consequence of my view is that I consider widespread destruction caused by conventional weapons equivalent to the use of nuclear weapons. Widespread US attacks on critical mainland Chinese targets is a first use of nuclear weapons no matter what weapons the US employed.

If your objection is that at present China doesn't have the number of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, or the force posture and basing, or the conventional forces to protect them from counterattack to successfully employ this strategy and control the US's response, I agree fully. If you object at a deeper level that any use of nuclear weapons by China, no matter how limited, will provoke an overwhelming US response (even if the US is not capable of mounting such a response without courting its own total destruction), then our views on this matter are irreconcilable.

 

[Abominable]

There's a point I missed making in my first response to you: Why does the US feel that striking soft Chinese targets - or even any Chinese targets on the mainland (after all, that's the home soil of a nuclear-armed nation) - is either not escalatory or an escalation it can make with impunity? Is destroying JNCX fine if done with RDX rather than plutonium?

There's a core philosophical difference I have with people I argue this with, and I'll state upfront that almost no one agrees with my position - I think the scale of destruction is what determines escalatory potential, not the physics of the weapons employed to achieve that destruction. Viewed from this angle, nuclear weapons across the spectrum of yields become an integrated part of warfighting, not just a totemic deterrent whose use is dismissed from the realm of possibility.

Another consequence of my view is that I consider widespread destruction caused by conventional weapons equivalent to the use of nuclear weapons. Widespread US attacks on critical mainland Chinese targets is a first use of nuclear weapons no matter what weapons the US employed.

If your objection is that at present China doesn't have the number of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, or the force posture and basing, or the conventional forces to protect them from counterattack to successfully employ this strategy and control the US's response, I agree fully. If you object at a deeper level that any use of nuclear weapons by China, no matter how limited, will provoke an overwhelming US response (even if the US is not capable of mounting such a response without courting its own total destruction), then our views on this matter are irreconcilable.

That's right and in a real war will be what people will look at.

Say China uses a tactical nuke on a US base. Is America going to nuke a Chinese city? Unlikely, because they will very likely lose a city themselves. They aren't going to win a battle of population attrition with China.

Most likely their response will be in kind, a nuclear attack on a similar sized base.

 

[Mohsin77]

If Chinese military industry suffers enough damage that my proposed threshold is crossed, part of the response is China attacks US military-industrial targets on the US mainland with tactical nuclear weapons.

You don't need nukes for this though.

You can take out factories and R&D facilities with 500kg conventional warheads.

Just use SLCMs and HGVs etc.

Why bother escalating to nukes and giving the enemy the excuse to take you down with them?

There is no winning in mutually assured destruction.

 

[JamesRed]

There's a point I missed making in my first response to you: Why does the US feel that striking soft Chinese targets - or even any Chinese targets on the mainland (after all, that's the home soil of a nuclear-armed nation) - is either not escalatory or an escalation it can make with impunity? Is destroying JNCX fine if done with RDX rather than plutonium?

DC "Think Tanks" / Rand / Atlantic Council / Lockheed they all exist in the same echo chamber. They claim "an attack on an American carrier would warrant a retaliatory nuclear response" and at the same time "China's nuclear posturing is disastrous and stupid and a show of weakness". It's just more hypocrisy coming from the same fools.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

You don't need nukes for this though.

You can take out factories and R&D facilities with 500kg conventional warheads.

Just use SLCMs and HGVs etc.

I wish this was true. I don't advocate what I do because I like it, I do so because there's no other option. China doesn't have bases in Mexico and LatAm where it can generate a large volume of fire against US targets like factories and shipyards. It has to compensate for that by making what little volume it can generate count for a lot, and that means nuclear weapons of around 1kt yield (around the scale of the Beirut Explosion). Simple arithmetic shows that it takes 2,000 500kg bombs to have the same explosive yield (although, in practice 2,000 bombs would be far more destructive since they would be spread out). Plinking these targets with a few SLCMs - which would take valuable PLAN subs away from the western Pacific theatre - and HGVs just won't cut it.

I think something that's lost from all this is that I intend this as a deterrent. I would consider my idea's mission accomplished if it prevents the US from attacking military-industrial targets in China.

 

[clockwork]

I think a better response to the deterrence from soft targets dilemma is simply to use them on US bases. They can't destroy all the Chinese MIC targets that quickly with conventional means. If they start carrying out even one sortie, immediately use TNWs to completely annihilate all US bases and forces West of Hawaii, including CSGs, ARGs and SAGs. That way they won't be able to do any more damage. If necessary use strategic warheads against these targets, e.g. several hundred kiloton yield groundburst against the facilities on Guam (without destroying the city).
And the US won't be able to escalate to TNWs against the Chinese mainland in response without equal retaliation.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

I think a better response to the deterrence from soft targets dilemma is simply to use them on US bases. They can't destroy all the Chinese MIC targets that quickly with conventional means. If they start carrying out even one sortie, immediately use TNWs to completely annihilate all US bases and forces West of Hawaii, including CSGs, ARGs and SAGs. That way they won't be able to do any more damage. And the US won't be able to escalate to TNWs against the Chinese mainland in response without equal retaliation.

I welcome anything that makes my idea moot. If the PLA can sweep away all US forces quick enough that the damage they inflict on China's industry is negligible, so much the better. That would be ideal. My idea is about what to do if things aren't ideal.