Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario

SinoSoldier said:

The Allies did face resistance upon entering the beaches despite having conducted bombing raids on the defenses prior to the operation. Nobody realistically expects the PLA to mop up 100% of the defending forces prior to going in, but any fighting should be limited to sporadic pockets rather than a coordinated defense like what the Germans put up.

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Yes, the D-Day landings faced some resistance.
I also expect PLA landings to face some resistance.

However in the case of D-Day, the extent of resistance, and more importantly, the extent of the counterattack that they faced was significantly reduced compared to what Germany had in store for the allies.
Similarly, I expect the PLA's bombing campaign to significantly reduce the ROC military's extent of resistance and their ability to counterattack as well.



I say this, because what you wrote before -- wiping out most of the "aircraft, C&C centers, airfields, naval vessels, and military staging areas or depots" -- is obviously very sensible and is entirely expected for the PLA to do prior to an amphibious assault... but even having done that, whatever beach/es they choose to land at are obviously still going to face some degree of coordinated resistance as they reach the shore.

What do you guys think Taiwan learned from this Conflict?

Are they now going to stockpile ATGMS? Ramp up Taiwanese nationalism in preparation for the "civilians take up arms" call? Start distributing "how to make Molotov cocktail" pamphlets?

I wonder if the politicos in Taiwan will be willing to do photo ops of them on the front line.

And how does China counter what Taiwan learned from this conflict?

Fedupwithlies said:

What do you guys think Taiwan learned from this Conflict?

Are they now going to stockpile ATGMS? Ramp up Taiwanese nationalism in preparation for the "civilians take up arms" call? Start distributing "how to make Molotov cocktail" pamphlets?

I wonder if the politicos in Taiwan will be willing to do photo ops of them on the front line.

And how does China counter what Taiwan learned from this conflict?

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all the lessons learned are the wrong ones though, because Russia did not start with war of attrition force. they still had the foolish belief that Ukrainians were still their old school Soviet brothers and tried to minimize collateral damage even to their own detriment. But now Russia realizes all the old school Soviet brothers already moved to Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk... the remaining ones are hardcore nationalists. The solution is that now they're moving to war of attrition mode with the classical encirclement, pin down, artillery grid deletion. it is working.

the solution: this may be unfortunate, but a media fear campaign may be the way to go. Russia played the human rights card too late. They needed to start playing the human rights card early. It doesn't matter if west believes it, it doesn't even matter if Russians believe it, it's plausible deniability and a mental anesthetic. Basically, have a plausible story to let Chinese know that all the Chinese brothers have moved back to China already. Play the human rights card early (even if it means striking first economically to induce a human rights decline).

Finish the H-20 bomber and mass produce them in the same ballpark as the B-21. All the issues regarding firepower, persistence, recon, and battle damage assessment would be solved if a stealth bomber with powerful SAR/GMTI capability enter service in large numbers. Bonus for a sino-MOP that can take out Hengshan Command Center.

First thing to do is to cut off internet lines lol. I can already hear the taiwanese whining and crying for america's help

sndef888 said:

First thing to do is to cut off internet lines lol. I can already hear the wanwanese whining and crying for america's help

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that's a given. I predict on hour 0 the undersea internet cables will be cut. It is clear from Ukraine's case that software attacks are not enough, hitting hardware is the only possibility. Remember there was a cybr attack on hour 0 and yet it was repaired day 1. much harder to repair an undersea cable with 039Cs and 093Gs lurking everywhere.

they'll be reduced to satellite internet at that point. Satellite internet SNR is low, you can overpower it with jammers. Now they'll be reduced to point to point datalinks with aircraft or drones. That's OK. It's not a 100% media blackout, but they can't handle the data volume required. Not enough bandwidth. That means essentially a media blackout from ordinary people. Only their government can report and not with high definition video either. That loses them credibility.

swarm drones will be a game changer, most of Russian losses could be avoided with this【全自主微型飞行机器人集群-哔哩哔哩】

tphuang said:

The amount of armor you see on Z-10ME is probably the most they would ever put on domestic Z-10s. So even though they have a much better protected lineup of helicopters, it's still not great. Their proposal is revisiting the Ka-52 import. They talked about how Ka-52 managed to survive or at least land even after getting struck with missile and the pilots still survived.
...
Maybe they can turn Z-20 into an assault helicopter, but it wouldn't be a dedicated attack helicopter.

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Yes they need to make a heavy attack helicopter based on the Z-20. But the thing is replicating the Ka-52 would not be easy. Even if the Russians give the tech transfer it is sufficiently different from other helicopters to make it totally different. It is one of few helicopters in the world with ejection seat. The propeller blades get ejected first and then seat ejects. It will be much more expensive than other attack helicopters.

tphuang said:

They also mentioned that Russians really didn't plan their helicopter deployments that well. In the example of the failed attack on the Ukrainian airport on the first day. There really is no excuses not having enough helicopters to rescue the stranded troops afterward. You must plan to have more in reserve in case you take more losses than expected. US military is really good at this. Very rarely do you see America having issues where they do not have enough helicopters when they need item.

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I disagree. The Russians allegedly made a heliborne troop drop with 200 helicopters to reinforce them. They were over ambitious trying to land heavy equipment with Il-76 after initial small troop drop of 200 VDV troops. But longer range artillery fire on the landing strip made landing heavy equipment impossible. So they sent the heavy equipment via land from Belarus and did the mass heliborne troop drop with 200 helicopters afterwards. Considering the base is right next to Kiev they did quite well. The 200 VDV troops had to fend off strikes by Ukrainian mechanized troops, but they had air support to disable opposing vehicles and survived the night.

tphuang said:

The other point they really hammered home is Russia's attempts to control the air space. Again, Ukraine does not have a great air force or air defense, but RuAF could not suppress it. RuAF took out radar stations and probably command centers in the airport, but could not keep runways out of action or even destroy the aircraft hangars.

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This is overblown. US was not able to completely eliminate Iraqi air power until the 10th day in the war.

tphuang said:

This is a huge indictment on RuAF's inability to sustain operations. They were only performing sorties twice a day.

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The fact is we don't know how many sorties they are doing.

tphuang said:

That is really not sufficient to keeping the target air base out of action. In addition, they commented on Russia's lack of success in electronic warfare or SEAD missions.

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They did pretty well knocking out radar and major S-300 installations with cruise missile strikes. They also disabled most large runways. And they do have EW equipment which is why you never see enemy smartphone communications in the main armed engagements.

Of course once they leave 6km range of Leer-3 system then they can use their smartphones.

tphuang said:

They do not think RuAF improved much in this area since 2008. Again, this is not due to lack of new equipments for RuAF. This points to probably lack of realistic training and slow directions from command centers for additional air raid.

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Agreed that RuAF needs improvements in coordination of large flight groups. They are mostly used to doing combat air patrol with a couple aircraft or doing CAS missions in Syria. But you have to see they avoided using bombardment with Tu-22M3 to avoid civilian mass casualties.

tphuang said:

Another point they mentioned is mobile anti-aircraft solution like Taiwan's Skyguard system. They mentioned how J-16/20 often had more trouble in DACT against HQ-17 rather than HQ-9/S-400, because mobile SAMs can often sneak up on attacking aircraft if they fly predictable routes. To me, this is another major reason they really need a lot more UCAVs. You want your most powerful SEAD aircraft to take out the major air defense systems. However, you still need to clear out the shorter and more mobile air defense system afterward. Helicopters would be in danger against these things. UCAVs with accurate PGMs and high quality sensors would probably be the best tools at tracking these things down and destroying them. Again, I think PLAAF will need to make a lot more investment in this area. These platforms will continue to improve as AI/software technology continue to improve.

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In Ukraine they hid the mobile anti-air systems among the civilian houses. That is why the air defense isn't completely disabled yet. Systems like the Buk and Osa are small enough and mobile enough they can do this. Thankfully most US air defense systems have crap mobility or crap range. Osa is also problematic since it uses line of sight to track targets and this can't be jammed. You would need to use drones to target such systems. But AFAIK US has no similar system and neither does Taiwan.

tphuang said:

Overall, I think there are already a lot of lessons PLA can learn from the Ukraine conflict. There are certain Russian shortcomings in organization, logistics and training that are probably also there with PLA since neither forces have been in large scale conflicts recently. I think they need a lot more joint operations training involving a lot of helicopters, aircraft and amphibious ships and they need to show the ability to support these equipment in forward positions.

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Yes. China needs to cut international communications in Taiwan and take control of the narrative locally by getting their TV broadcasting networks and modern equivalents.

From I understand the Russians let their communications operating so they can more easily get evidence on all the top nationalists. They scooped up this information and will use it in subsequent mop up campaign. So different strategy.
In case of Taiwan there is danger they would transfer Taiwanese IP data from companies like TSMC to US via network. So it needs to be disabled before attack.

What lessons has Taiwan learned so far? That no one will actively intervene and get in a direct war vs china, a nuclear power just like Russia.

Russia is trying to minimize casualties both civilian and military. They don't want to destroy Ukraine completely, just take out the leadership and cripple the military and most likely force negotiations to end the war. It's still early days so we'll see how this goes.

I don't see china doing any military actions against Taiwan unless it has no other choice, and then if it does happen, china should and will commit 100%. Doing a light half hearted attack will accomplish nothing, the sanctions and fallout will be the same. Russia wants to install a puppet gov, if china invades it will be to reunify Taiwan completely with CPC gov, not a puppet independent gov.

Helicopters will be too vulnerable unless china has flattened Taiwan already and secured landing sites and total air and sea dominance.

Taiwan will be encircled completely by sea, missiles will be flying to destroy all above ground targets including comms, maybe even power plants and water, everything. Make Taiwan unsustainable by itself. I can see air dropping tens of thousands of troops and tanks once air dominance is secured. These troops can then secure landing spots for sea transport and landings. I can also see china making use of civilian population also, doing leaflet drops to tell civilians to leave cities or whatever area they are going to attack, anyone still there after will be fair game. China will announce some non combat safe zone, where civilians and innocents can go, and whoever doesn't go there will be fair game. This will allow china to use overwhelming firepower and not need to take too much risk in urban combat or worry about civilian casualties. They can just flatten everything with overwhelming firepower.

After that just keep transporting Chinese troops to mop up and secure the whole island. Send a million troops if needed. Recruit volunteer army or call reserves, whatever. Where can Taiwan army hide? Nowhere. They will be quickly mopped up with overwhelming numbers and firepower.

It is the information war that china needs to up it's game in and what comes after, Taiwan itself wouldn't be that hard if china is actually fully committed which they will be if an attack does happen, otherwise china wouldn't even attack.

FairAndUnbiased said:

that's a given. I predict on hour 0 the undersea internet cables will be cut. It is clear from Ukraine's case that software attacks are not enough, hitting hardware is the only possibility. Remember there was a cybr attack on hour 0 and yet it was repaired day 1. much harder to repair an undersea cable with 039Cs and 093Gs lurking everywhere.

they'll be reduced to satellite internet at that point. Satellite internet SNR is low, you can overpower it with jammers. Now they'll be reduced to point to point datalinks with aircraft or drones. That's OK. It's not a 100% media blackout, but they can't handle the data volume required. Not enough bandwidth. That means essentially a media blackout from ordinary people. Only their government can report and not with high definition video either. That loses them credibility.

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I don't think the Russians had any intention of cutting comms access to UKR if they did that it would just allow the manufacturing of false/fake news to go into over drive, rather its forced the West to ban RT and silence dissenting voices in social media, French journo in UKR angrily protested that his material was dropped because it didn't follow the narrative, not a good look if you spout 'freedom of the press'! They can harp on about this, that and the other but they've not stopped buying Russian gas and oil, which says it all!!!

If it ever came to it, an invasion of Taiwan would more likely resemble a much larger scale Falkland's type operation, exclusion zone, air superiority, isolation then landing but executed at 'China speed', at each step Taiwan can surrender, this is likely to be preceded by a deadline to reverse its position before decapitation since only a hostile government would declare independence to force the invasion, its a civil war there's no need to have anyone to 'negotiate' with and its the generals that will surrender or fight on hoping for relief forces from outside, professional soldiers will likely do a Friedrich Paulus, political commissar types will want to fight on. A variable will be if there's a 琼崖纵队 lurking in Taiwan like in Hainan in which case it might be a straight landing since resistance would have been disabled or neutralised.

The only real geopolitical lessons from UKR/RUS is how spineless the West is and how muted the Global South has been, (UAE and India both abstained at the UNSC vote with China!) and from a military standpoint how far the rebuilding of the Russian forces have come on since Georgia.