PLA air operations in westpac region

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Shadow_Whomel

Junior Member
Registered Member
InfamousMeow said:
But what proactive measures can China adopt in its PR War? Lying like the western media?
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I think there is a political element involved in this matter. Please note that Australia had a general election on 21 May and no one wants to screw up relations with China directly at the beginning of their term. This may explain the low profile of the matter on both sides at first. And I don't think it's a coincidence that this story broke, it follows the Canadian story and seems contrived.
 
tphuang

tphuang

Lieutenant General
Staff member
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plawolf said:
Two problems with doing that.

Firstly, such aggressive action would only serve to ‘prove’ the need for continued US military presence in those countries and strength America’s China-threat claims. The end result is more anti-China unity between SK and Japan. Instead, without that overt external threat, you are seeing the fault lines between SK and Japan crack open every now and again despite the best efforts of the US and their agents in both countries.

Secondly, by reciprocating, China is also in a way legitimatising American FON operations and spy plane probes.

The most important pieces of intel you can gather from such close in surveillance and aggressive probing is to gauge response capabilities/times and probe for weakness and deficiencies in local defences. Useful if you are planing offensive operations for the US, but far less so for China as it has no ambitions for such offensive operations, and any attacks at US bases in SK or Japan would be mostly done by long range missiles anyways, negating the need for such detailed defence posture information.

I think if China wants to push back, it would be far more effective and useful to gatecrash US and vassals exercises instead.

Doing so would be far less overtly provocative to neighbouring countries and also would greatly undermine the training value of said exercises as the US would need to put in place serious restrictions if they don’t want China to hoover up useful intel.
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Let's differentiate between Japan and SK. At this point, China can have a real relationship with SK. Japan is part of the anti-China alliance. As such, I don't think any harm can be done by sending drones to spy on bases in Japan. As long as they stay 50 nm out of Japanese air space, I don't see any issues around that. It's completely legal. Most of the sensitive US bases are around Japan anyways. You can definitely gather intel or capture secure communication that can be decrypted later with quantum computers. And I bet you will see hypocritical responses from Japan and US defense officials.

Keep in mind that F-35s are quite abundant in this area. It's well worth the intel to gather radar signature and emissions details from all F-35s.
 
plawolf

plawolf

Lieutenant General
tphuang said:
Let's differentiate between Japan and SK. At this point, China can have a real relationship with SK. Japan is part of the anti-China alliance. As such, I don't think any harm can be done by sending drones to spy on bases in Japan. As long as they stay 50 nm out of Japanese air space, I don't see any issues around that. It's completely legal. Most of the sensitive US bases are around Japan anyways. You can definitely gather intel or capture secure communication that can be decrypted later with quantum computers. And I bet you will see hypocritical responses from Japan and US defense officials.

Keep in mind that F-35s are quite abundant in this area. It's well worth the intel to gather radar signature and emissions details from all F-35s.
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Other than fleeing feel-goods, what would such flights actually really achieve?

Sure there are F35s in those waters, but do you honestly expect them to offer themselves up to Chinese spy planes to hoover up all their signature and emissions secrets?

Similar deal with secure comms. Unless you do probes so persistently that they have no realistic windows without one of your assets nearby, they will just stop sensitive emissions and flight operations when your planes are near. Hell, they will probably work that into their training, as I’m sure the PLA does for US and vassal spying and FON intrusions and even the US cannot come close to the intensity of intrusions to seriously disrupt PLA routine training.

If you really want a chance at gathering valuable intel, you can only do so with covert assets like subs (as the Australians tried with Shanghai), VLO planes, or covert spy ships masquerading as something else.

High profile recon and FON ops are glorified political stunts designed to give the politicians something they can boast about. Something thankfully China doesn’t need to stoop to doing.

Interestingly, the only way you can have even a reasonable chance of getting useful intel from such overt probing missions is if you pushed the established boundaries of what is tolerated. But doing so will almost certainly trigger a counter-escalatory response move by the other side as they push back, which can easily lead to ‘dangerous flying’ and a nose full of chaff and flares or something actually consequential. As the saying goes, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Why would China want to get into this stupid game?
 
F

foxmulder

Junior Member
plawolf said:
Other than fleeing feel-goods, what would such flights actually really achieve?

Sure there are F35s in those waters, but do you honestly expect them to offer themselves up to Chinese spy planes to hoover up all their signature and emissions secrets?

Similar deal with secure comms. Unless you do probes so persistently that they have no realistic windows without one of your assets nearby, they will just stop sensitive emissions and flight operations when your planes are near. Hell, they will probably work that into their training, as I’m sure the PLA does for US and vassal spying and FON intrusions and even the US cannot come close to the intensity of intrusions to seriously disrupt PLA routine training.

If you really want a chance at gathering valuable intel, you can only do so with covert assets like subs (as the Australians tried with Shanghai), VLO planes, or covert spy ships masquerading as something else.

High profile recon and FON ops are glorified political stunts designed to give the politicians something they can boast about. Something thankfully China doesn’t need to stoop to doing.

Interestingly, the only way you can have even a reasonable chance of getting useful intel from such overt probing missions is if you pushed the established boundaries of what is tolerated. But doing so will almost certainly trigger a counter-escalatory response move by the other side as they push back, which can easily lead to ‘dangerous flying’ and a nose full of chaff and flares or something actually consequential. As the saying goes, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Why would China want to get into this stupid game?
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Why does US do it? Just to feel good? You are underestimating the value of intel gathering. And yes, it has political value, too. that is a bonus.
 
plawolf

plawolf

Lieutenant General
foxmulder said:
Why does US do it? Just to feel good? You are underestimating the value of intel gathering. And yes, it has political value, too. that is a bonus.
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The US does it because they would attack mainland China and bomb China back to the Stone Age tomorrow and colonise China if they could actually do it.

China does not hold anything like such grand delusions and colonial avarice towards the US.

All of the big strategically worthwhile targets are big and non-moveable with their locations well known to both sides for decades. You don’t need to do regular intrusive close-in recon of the US mainland to know where to send missiles to blow up Lockmark, Langley, the Pentagon and the like. Same deal for US naval facilities, arms depots, air bases and the like in Asia

What the most valuable intel these close in recon missions can gather are the fleeting real time location of mobile tactical targets, their response times and readiness states etc.

Very important for attackers who wants to bomb a place back to the Stone Age or even mount an amphibious invasion, but of limited to no practical value to a defensive power.

It’s why the US does probes and close-in recon against China and China does the same to Taiwan but China doesn’t bother with such probes against the US. The intel such probes can gather has little to no practical value to China since it does not want to attack and invade the US.
 
F

foxmulder

Junior Member
plawolf said:
The US does it because they would attack mainland China and bomb China back to the Stone Age tomorrow and colonise China if they could actually do it.

China does not hold anything like such grand delusions and colonial avarice towards the US.

All of the big strategically worthwhile targets are big and non-moveable with their locations well known to both sides for decades. You don’t need to do regular intrusive close-in recon of the US mainland to know where to send missiles to blow up Lockmark, Langley, the Pentagon and the like. Same deal for US naval facilities, arms depots, air bases and the like in Asia

What the most valuable intel these close in recon missions can gather are the fleeting real time location of mobile tactical targets, their response times and readiness states etc.

Very important for attackers who wants to bomb a place back to the Stone Age or even mount an amphibious invasion, but of limited to no practical value to a defensive power.

It’s why the US does probes and close-in recon against China and China does the same to Taiwan but China doesn’t bother with such probes against the US. The intel such probes can gather has little to no practical value to China since it does not want to attack and invade the US.
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It is the opposite!!

As you put it "intel these close in recon missions can gather are the fleeting real time location of mobile tactical targets" and at tactical level, China needs this more than US in a "limited" Taiwan/South China Sea skirmish.! I was not talking about 48 state lol ! :D
 
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