AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Indifference is what the US and the West has brought upon the world. Two wrongs don't make a right but the first wrong is okay when the West does it.
Lessons for China to learn from Ukraine conflict for Taiwan scenario
- Thread starter tphuang
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If the "munitions dispenser" and the LGB is in widespread service, then it doesn't seem that PGMs are being ignored much.
Arguably, the most important 'PGM' you can have is that "munitions dispenser," because it allows you to hit all the following targets:
- Radar/SAMs for DEAD (much more effective than ARMs, according to USAF Wild Weasel pilots.)
- Airbases
- Ground Attack (inf/mech/armor/convoys)
Along with the "munition dispensers" + LGBs, if the PLA is building/maintaining a sufficient inventory of CMs and ALCMs, I'd say it's in a good place. Personally, I think CMs/ALCMs should be the highest priority, then munition dispensers, followed by LGBs/JDAMs.
Their moralizing is honestly vomit inducing b.s. My answer to that is cry me a river.
1, no armies flew against double digit SAM series before. There is a reason why non-stealth aircraft aren't considered enough for stand-in anymore. Especially those that can suddenly go online right within their NEZ, which for M=6 missiles is actually huge.
2, all of the mentioned is the case here as well(EW, AD suppression - we have plenty evidence of both). But fact that terrain masking just massively decreases range of the most dangerous threats doesn't change. Neither does the fact that targeting pod won't see much through a thick low overcast.
The only widespread PGM in PLA service is the 500kg LGB.
The 500kg munitions dispenser and 100kg LGB/satenav bomb might have begun introduction in service, I would say these two are respectively in the "Initial Service Fielding/Tactics" phase.
Of course, if both of those can be proliferated in large numbers, that would be a significant boost in capability.
However, the reason why I am very much unimpressed by the 500kg LGB (and also the 100kg LGB/satnav bomb so far) is because of multiple ejector racks.
Let me demonstrate what I mean:
This is a JH-7/A with four 500kg LGBs. It's got a central EFT, a targeting pod, and four SRAAMs. Not bad right?
But that's only four targets it can engage.
But those pylons are rated for much more than 500kg in payload, and 500kg is also overkill for most targets you'd be interested in engaging.
Here's a JH-7/A carrying 250kg unguided bombs -- twenty of them:
Those pylons are rated for that much weight. Imagine if those 250kg bombs were 250kg PGMs instead.
Sure, realistically using all four of the inner wing pylons for bombs is a bit much -- realistically you'd probably have three EFTs (one central, two underwing) -- but on a JH-7/A, that still leaves you with the two inner wing stations to carry twelve 250kg PGMs.
And we see the same for other aircraft, like J-10s (here with what looks like eight 250kg class bombs, four on dual multi racks and four on fuselage stations)...
.... H-6Ks, here seen carrying thirty six 250kg class bombs, six bomb per multi-ejector rack on each of its six weapons pylons...
... and Flankers carrying 250kg bombs as well on six bomb multi ejector racks
Of course, for those above pictures depicted, carrying that many bombs might not be fully realistic.
In the case of the Flanker in particular, no Flanker will ever carry that many bombs in a real mission, but even "only" carrying two multi racks of 250kg bombs will be twelve 250kg PGMs. Add on a targeting pod, a self protection jamming pod, a couple of SRAAMs and BVRAAMs and that is a very realistic strike loadout with self protection capability.
For the J-10, it will likely have to replace one of the forward intake stations with a targeting pod, and the other forward intake station with a self protection jamming pod. That leaves two dual racks and two rear fuselage stations for six total 250kg PGMs. Then there's the three EFTs and two SRAAMs, and you also get a respectable strike loadout.
For H-6K, it can actually probably take off and carry out a realistic strike mission with thirty six 250kg PGMs, especially if those PGMs have wing kits for range extension, in an environment where you mostly have air control with the enemy and plentiful supporting fighter escort and EW/ECM escort.
Heck, even if multi-racks with six 250kg bombs is too ambitious, even a triple rack for 250kg bombs will be fine, like what F-16 and Rafale have.
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All of this is to say -- maximizing targets successfully engaged/sortie is arguably the most important benefit of contemporary PGMs.
Maximizing targets/sortie, is enabled through:
1. Use of lower weight PGMs (mostly in the 250kg class which are sufficient for most soft and semi-hardened targets, or even better, 100kg class PGMs with built in wing kits (like SDB, SPICE 250, or Chinese products like TL-20, FT-7) that allow for ranges of about 100km....
2. Multi-ejector racks where multiple PGMs can be carried on one single pylon.
3. More advanced guidance methods -- usually combining satellite and laser guidance, but now also including more advanced terminal seekers like ImIR and MMW.
IMO, the PGM types that the PLA types would most benefit from adopting are:
- 250kg PGMs, to be carried on multi-ejector racks, six per rack for JH-7/A and J-16, perhaps triple or dual racks for J-10.They would be modular PGMs with satellite and laser guidance options and the ability to install an optional wing kit to extend range. The FT family of bombs offers this, as so:
- 100kg PGMs with about 100km range. These would be Sino-SDBs. Satellite guided as standard, with ImIR terminal guidance additional. Quad racks similar to SDB, SPICE-250, SPEAR 3. A number of such systems are already offered by the Chinese aerospace industry and tested, but again they are not committed to. TL-20, YL-14, FT-7 are examples of these.
Once the PLA commits to a family of 250kg PGMs and 100kg PGMs and -- most importantly -- multi-ejector racks for them, then that would be a major sign that they are taking A2G PGM strike seriously.
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The same argument could be made for Korean war. Before that everyone thought china was weak man of Asia. However Korean war changed all that and guaranteed that china had a peaceful rise for decades, and no one could ever attack china again.
If china allows Taiwan and usa to completely walk all over it with threats and china doesn't defend its most important sovereignty, then where does it end? When usa and west threaten sanctions and decoupling and war unless china gives up Tibet, Xinjiang, hong Kong, where does it stop? You give an inch, they will take a mile.
China literally only exists because of Korean war and because we can defend our sovereignty. That is the basis of nation states itself. I don't see why china should be any different. They already hate chinese enough and already containing and trying to overthrow china. We must make a stand here. It's not irrational and making comparisons about shooting some black guy in some silly racist fit of knee jerk rage is completely missing the point.
Giving up Taiwan itself like that would also cause massive internal problems. You think 1.4 billion chinese will accept cpc giving that up and allowing american and hostile Taiwan troops to completely isolate china and can cut off china's access to world oceans?
Taiwan is an existential issue not just militarily, but culturally and china's credibility on a world stage is on the line. You want to give up china's hard won respect and sovereignty and basically become a vassal state of usa and it's vassals? Because that is what this basically means. A paper tiger who can't even defend it's own sovereign territory and who will allow usa and others to split parts of china off and meddle in Chinese domestic issues.
CPC might aswell just commit suicide for real and maybe another civil war will start again, this time it will be 3 way civil war between CPC, roc and new party. China will be in even more chaos and could even be destroyed. Taiwan is not some small irrelevant issue otherwise we would have thrown it away long ago. It's not easy to keep a state like china unified and in one direction and defend it against literally the whole world who's against you for centuries. Don't get complacent now just because china is doing well and united, it could easily fall and split again if you take things for granted and start giving territory away without a fight, one that china would easily win militarily at that(no nukes included).
TLDR: you give an inch they will take a mile. They'll keep taking and pushing until china collapses and is split and in chaos and ruin. China cannot show any weakness. You are showing weakness. That is bad for china to show weakness and capitulate without even a fight. History is not on your side and if anything like korean war, china is only respected because of our strength and willingness to fight, even against the whole world combined at the same time if need be. And we will prevail just like in Korea. History is on our side, not theirs. They won't even have the balls to fight, just like usa never went into north vietnam, just like they didn't go into Ukraine and fight Russia. Yet you're shitting yourself already. Some things are more important than money and this is one of them. Its more than just a useless piece of rock but tied into Chinese psyche/confidence/morale itself and also how the world sees us. Chinese are confident and proud now. Giving it up without a fight will destroy all of that. Both in our minds and in the world's mind.
If anything it's the other way around. To the world it's a useless piece of rock. But to us Chinese it's existential threat and of the utmost importance. Your attitude and talk makes it more likely to happen if anything. We shouldn't even consider for one second about giving up Taiwan and appeasing imperialists trying to contain and destroy us.
many non-Chinese members here don't understand this. They think that China can just become some vassal country. No. China has been a classical imperialist in the past (like Russia and Iran - note how modern imperialists HATE the classical empires), just not a modern imperialist. BTW, modern imperialists are 1000x more cruel and horrendous because they didn't have to integrate subjects or care about their well being.
Classical imperialism (unlike modern imperialism) is about annexing land into a contiguous multiethnic empire. The empire holds together because of military strength, value given to subjects/citizens and cultural unity, not because of shared ethnicity, religion or language. That means that anything that threatens the credibility of the state - its military strength, economic value and ability to propagate a unified culture - threatens the existence of the empire. That is why nationalism is extremely toxic to empires and why China suppresses nationalism - even among Han.
Giving up land makes people question the value of the empire. It means that the empire isn't that strong, there's not much value in being a subject/citizen and there's no need to buy into the unified culture. It's better to be nationalist for your own little region.
That's what happened in Ukraine after the fall of the USSR. People didn't want to buy into the Russian Empire (whether as Imperial Russia or Soviet Union) anymore because they felt that Russia didn't have the military clout anymore, there was no value to being Russian anymore, and Russian culture was lame. So instead of working with Russia in CSTO and CIS, they leave and join EU/NATO. It was the Baltics first. OK whatever, Russia doesn't really consider them core, they're powerless and have tiny population.
But then you have Georgia, birthplace of Stalin, and Ukraine, heart of Kievan Rus, try to leave, after seeing the example of the Baltics. That would be like Guangdong (birthplace of Sun Yatsen), Hunan (birthplace of Mao Zedong) and Hubei/Henan (Kingdom of Chu and Shang Dynasty) trying to secede from China and ally with Japan.
This is why China can't give up Taiwan no matter what, not without a fight. It'll be like the Baltics leaving the USSR. By themselves, they're worthless, but it started the chain reaction of crippling the Russian Empire with ethnic nationalism. Russia hasn't recovered since. Millions died in the aftermath.
solarz
Brigadier
No one said you didn't, when did this become all about you!
You fight a war with what you have saying 'putting their money where their mouths are' when they are obviously capable of producing said arms but choose not to acquire them means either they are broke or they have an alternate game plan, since there's outwardly no indication of the former it would leans towards the latter. Rather than analysing what that game plan might be, there's a bunch of fluff about well it will better if they had X and Y, Why is that, is it because there's only one 'right' way to do things?
When presented with an alternate scenario such rhetorical gems as 'I'm well aware....' and 'Let's not try to copium it...' are used, bravo!
Air dropped bombs are legitimately a superior option compared to guided rocket artillery so long as you can keep your aircrafts safe. This is due to the obvious reason that bombs do not require a fairly expensive rocket booster to function. Because of this rocket artillery cannot substitute bombs.
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