That's quite long so apologies if I missed something
Less than a day, and it should be less than 12 hours
what extent of assets -- is it referring to air bases, C4I, IADS, radars, CSGs, naval formations... and in what landmasses in the region?
Includes everything important in the 1st and 2nd Island Chain. This includes everything you have mentioned. Air defences, Airbases, radars, C4I, CSGs, naval formations, naval bases and anything else that could potentially militarily affect the PLA operations during the first days. After that is done (while keeping enemy airbases offline) you can start prosecuting lower value targets
Guam, Japan, Taiwan. Not S.Korea though (more of my opinion that the PLA wouldn't strike it first as I give S.K low chance to get involved in war, even though it hosts US forces in its territory).
Although obvsiously important as it is the main victory goal, I would argue that Taiwanese assets should IMO be the least of the priorities, so Guam (when I say Guam I also include CGS, and other naval formations) and Japan should 100% be crippled on the first wave of attacks.
Ideally after the first rounds of attacks, US and Japanese forces should be unable to seriously affect PLA operations until the next wave of US reinforcements is gathered and then sent to the area (dunno how long thats it, >2-3 weeks?)
does the PLA even have the munitions to service all of those targets in the first place, and the platforms to deploy them?
Different munitions are going to be needed for striking Taiwan and for striking Guam. For Taiwan I am not fully certain as there have been some doubts about the number of PGMs (although I am aware that they are expanding their stock). But from my understanding the required munitions for Guam and Japan, the numbers are adequate. As for the necessary platforms, I don't know about that, but given that the munitions are there, I assume the platform numbers would't be that far behind (reload, distribution of munition stocks etc) . If you have info on that and you wish to share it, I would welcome it
- during wartime, materials and subsuppliers will likely be disrupted. Wartime economy priorities may compensate for that somewhat, but production of normal weapons will certainly be affected, and perhaps in a net adverse manner compared to peacetime.
China has its own massive stock for different materials. I am not sure for the exact composition of them, but I am aware that it is currently building massive storage facilities for materials that it doesn't have available. And in any case, in a war, the military industry gets first priority on them, not the civilian industry/economy, so I wouldn't be worried that the military would face competition from the civilians for materials.
And also don't forget Russia and BRI. All these combined should be enough to ensure production of weapons for many years.
And of course, as usual, this aspect should already be included in CMC war plans. So if the CMC thinks they don't have adequate supplies, they will simply not launch a war until they have them in sufficient quantities.
I think it is almost a certainty that production of some weapons will be negatively affected but I expect these issues to be ironed out in the following weeks (probably a few months) of a war. The CMC should already have the necessary war plans for it, so I am quite certain that everything regarding weapons production during wartime has been planned already. You don't produce a weapon without taking into account supply chain security
- what sort of surprise? Strategic, operational or tactical? Because if there is a period of tension over Taiwan or a conflict over Taiwan, it is likely that at minimum strategic surprise will be impossible to achieve. They may be able to achieve operational and tactical surprise, but that also requires the PLA to be spun up at high readiness for an extended duration to be able to strike out when it needs to... leading to..
- over how long can the PLA afford to wait for the element of surprise? Political and geostrategic realities means that the element of surprise does not allow the PLA to wait indefinitely -- time is an enemy to them as much as the opfor.
Tactical, operational yes. Strategic surprise will suffer, but with a big enough time delay and good messaging/actions this can also be achieved if handled carefully( lets put it at 30-50% success)
Indeed. Waiting time cannot be too long. But even with geopolitics involved, I would say that the PLA would still be able to be in higher readiness for more time than US forces (Japanese forces is an unknown for me, I haven't read any report on how long they can stay in that posture, I would guess, probably not very long).
So for Strategic surprise if we go by percentages, the PLA might not have it. But for Tactical and operation, it should have it.
- what sort of missiles would those "10000s" be? Because "missiles" are different -- a BVRAAM is different to a ATGM which is different to a AShBM which is different to a AShM. All of those missile types have their own subsuppliers and factories, and there are certain missiles which are of much more importance to a high end conflict than others.
Did you saw what I just wrote in that post you quoted? I said for breaking blockades (striking naval targets) in far distances. This certainly means, no BVRAAM, no ATGM (lol), yes for AShBM, not very realistic for AShM.
I would place AShBM as the number 1 priority for production
- over what time period would China be able to "just spam produce" those missiles? If this is a conflict one is talking about, then would they be able to produce "10000s of missiles" over the course of.... a month? a year? two years? And again, across which missile types?
In total war production, 2 years should be enough for China to reach that target. Could also be a bit sooner than that if the CPC/CMC has already made some preparations
I expect the biggest spender to be anti-ship, and then probably air-defence missiles. (PGM should be on their own category). BVRAAMs should also be significant but not take a big % of that. PLA's ideal (plausible imo) scenario would be knocking out the places airplanes can fly from, not the airplanes themselves.
But that is why I agree with ashnole, that your claims are written in a manner which is overly confident in a manner that we cannot substantiate.
The extent of your extraordinary confident claims, accordingly requires a commensurate degree of extraordinary evidence, justification, and detail.
My claims were written like that because:
1) Obviously I believe that to be the case.
2) I don't have that much time to spend to expand my points appropriately. This back and forth already took quite a bit of my limited time, I probably won't be repeating that again. I am not a professional after all, I consider this more of a casual hobby than anything else.
I would also appreciate if you do not try to interpret the rules to try and manipulate the hand of moderators, thank you very much.
One liners are imo not acceptable in such a big discussion. You, as a moderator, justified it now and your explaination makes some sense so that's ok to me. I didn't even report that post. I simply noticed a lapse of rules and brought that to your attention. You as a moderator, are entitled to do whatever you want.
However I admit that my post afterwards that such behaviour
should be "bannable" could be considered manipulation, so you may be right. Apologies for that
And I would like to remind yourself and others:
Members shall not publicly call for the banning of any member.
Fair enough. If you want, you can delete that post where I said it should be a bannable offence. The more I think about it, the worse it gets. Not appropriate
