PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

siegecrossbow

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
ACuriousPLAFan said:
Just found this Tweet and some of its replies that basically confirmed the point:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1568700926948683776

Unroll:


One of the noteworthy replies under the post is this:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1568758301487431680

Unroll:


Honestly, Russia still thinks and behaves as if herself is still the Soviet Union (and that herself is the only one in this world that could go toe-to-toe with th United States), and still views China as some kind of a junior partner (just like how the Soviet Union under Stalin and Khruschev viewed China under Mao).

Yet, China today resembles nothing of China in the 1950s or 1960s. Although I suppose many in Russia still choose to live in the time period when they were the "Big Brotha" in Sino-Soviet/Russo relations.

Meanwhile, it is clear to everyone now that Russia wants to behave like a world nuclear superpower, but without the necessary population size, economic prowess and the industrial scale to back that behavior.
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I know the anecdote mentioned in the tweet. It was during the development of CR-929. Russian delegates asked for the Chinese side to put together a technical document and the Chinese obliged, getting everything ready within a span of days and got the document neatly packaged and sealed. After the Russian delegates left, the Chinese found the documents unopened and in pristine conditions on hotel beds.
 
F

Feima

Junior Member
Registered Member
ACuriousPLAFan said:
China only has one shot at this - there are no second chances.
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Disagree. Only in western fantasy does Taiwan get to declare and maintain formal independence if the first AR attempt fails. This is not a game and there isn't a game manufacturer-issued rule book that governs such stuff.

Which countries are going to recognize Taiwan as a country if China doesn't recognize the secession?
 
FriedButter

FriedButter

Major
Registered Member
Feima said:
Disagree. Only in western fantasy does Taiwan get to declare and maintain formal independence if the first AR attempt fails. This is not a game and there isn't a game manufacturer-issued rule book that governs such stuff.

Which countries are going to recognize Taiwan as a country if China doesn't recognize the secession?
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That doesn’t make any sense. If China fails then it means the PLA got destroyed. Any neutral state will side with the West and cause immense damage to the economy, which will delay any reconstruction efforts on the PLA by possibility decades. Not to mention the domestic politic turmoil.

Meanwhile, western politicians are growing more stupid combined with growing neocon / imperialist tendencies. You think they won’t seize on this chance to declare Taiwan independent and then turn it into a western base. The PLA is just a speed bump at that point while the economy is imploding with the fracturing of domestic politics.
 
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C

CMP

Senior Member
Registered Member
FriedButter said:
The only way the PLA fails to take Taiwan is if they got destroyed. What do you think China is going to lob a couple hundred missiles and call for a ceasefire?



Are you seriously this native about geopolitics.
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To be fair, most laymen don't know the first thing about geopolitics.
 
F

Feima

Junior Member
Registered Member
FriedButter said:
The only way the PLA fails to take Taiwan is if they got destroyed. What do you think China is going to lob a couple hundred missiles and call for a ceasefire?

Are you seriously this native about geopolitics.
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Non-answers.

Let's use Kosovo as example. Kosovo declared independence in 2008. According to Wikipedia, "As of 4 September 2020, 97 out of 193 (50.26%)
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member states, 22 out of 27 (81.48%)
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member states, 26 out of 30 (86.67%)
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member states, and 31 out of 57 (54.39%)
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member states have recognised
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. Conflicts have arisen regarding the number of countries recognizing Kosovo. The
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does not recognise it as a
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.
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"

Europe and NATO to be expected, since they actively participated in the break up of Yugoslavia. Serbia is certainly nowhere comparable to China, and the rest of the world did not automatically side with the west.
 
FairAndUnbiased

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier
Registered Member
gelgoog said:
The Lider battlecruiser design is relevant because the Russians have issues building large advanced gas turbine engines. Russia has no such issues with marine nuclear reactors.

Russia took 6 years to build the Sibir nuclear icebreaker with 25k tons displacement. In comparison they have taken in some cases 9 years to build Project 20380 corvettes with 2k tons displacement. There have been lots of delays with marine diesels and gas turbines but the nuclear propulsion projects have not had any delays. Well at least none which you can attribute to the nuclear reactor itself. Russia has the RITM-200 in service and is building the RITM-400. So the reactor R&D is basically a sunk cost. The nuclear industry is one of the few industries in Russia which actually works well and is not dysfunctional.

A large marine gas turbine would have to be derived from the PD-35 or NK-32 engine cores. The NK-32 engine production is all back ordered for Tu-160 and Tu-22M3 upgrades. Current production is like 4 engines a year. And the PD-35 is still under R&D and might not enter production until the decade is over. Without the nuclear propulsion you are basically looking at a navy without any cruisers. And as is even regular gas turbine engine production, M90 engine, is not large enough for the frigate program. Let alone for building larger quad engine destroyers. The cruiser program is supposed to aim at solving that.


Russia is lacking ships to such a degree I doubt the Slavas will be retired soon. You would need to see frigate production increase a lot and the issue is not lack of building ships, it is lack of production rate for components like engines and reduction gear. Only like in the last couple of years did UEC Saturn start delivering the M90. And production of reduction gear for the frigates is a major stumbling block as well with production being done at a former private company which just recently went bankrupt.


Russian military industry has been under sanctions from the West since 2014 annexation of Crimea. The biggest hit was losing former parts of the Soviet MIC which were still in Ukraine. It took a really long time, like 5 years, to replace most products and the production rate still is not quite there yet in several product categories.
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So they really need to start importing Chinese machine tools and components like AESA if they're not going to be ditching Lider class. And they need to start slimming down the navy and focusing on a few assets, like Lider for air defense, Admiral Gorshkov for ASW, and use ground based aviation + Lider's Zircon missiles as their strike capability. They can forget domestic LHD program and carrier in that case.

They also need to cut PAK-DA. It is nice to have but it is going to be a PowerPoint project forever. Focus on modernizing and making more Tu-160. And they should import either AWACs like KJ-200 or AWAC components since their A-50s are getting old and A-100 is under very slow production. With Russian ~60 billion USD budget they have to pick and choose. Even PLA with 250 billion USD budget is not putting as much into ground forces as necessary to save up for the navy and air force. Russia should have a small (relatively) navy capable of defending bastions and projecting a force via missiles, and really putting its money into ground and air power.

I think that Russia being more interoperable with China is a good thing.
 
FairAndUnbiased

FairAndUnbiased

Brigadier
Registered Member
ACuriousPLAFan said:
Just found this Tweet and some of its replies that basically confirmed the point:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1568700926948683776

Unroll:


One of the noteworthy replies under the post is this:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1568758301487431680

Unroll:


Honestly, Russia still thinks and behaves as if herself is still the Soviet Union (and that herself is the only one in this world that could go toe-to-toe with th United States), and still views China as some kind of a junior partner (just like how the Soviet Union under Stalin and Khruschev viewed China under Mao).

Yet, China today resembles nothing of China in the 1950s or 1960s. Although I suppose many in Russia still choose to live in the time period when they were the "Big Brotha" in Sino-Soviet/Russo relations.

Meanwhile, it is clear to everyone now that Russia wants to behave like a world nuclear superpower, but without the necessary population size, economic prowess and the industrial scale to back that behavior.
Click to expand...
The Russian people are fine but they need CPRF at the helm. Putin's whole thing is nationalism, so why be surprised at their behavior? I feel now that Russia is like Chiang Kai Shek ROC era.

Soviets were like an accelerated Qing Dynasty: strong at first but slowly crumbled due to stagnation.

In 1990's they underwent a chaotic warlord era like China in 1920's.

Putin, like Chiang Kai Shek, rose from the chaos as the strongest of the oligarchs.

Like Chiang, Putin was good at subduing weaker warlords (Georgia) and oligarchs. But now he's in a conventional war against Imperial Japan (NATO) and like Chiang, Putin is scared to declare war. Chiang didn't even declare war after Nanjing was lost, only after US declared war.
 
G

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
FairAndUnbiased said:
So they really need to start importing Chinese machine tools and components like AESA if they're not going to be ditching Lider class. And they need to start slimming down the navy and focusing on a few assets, like Lider for air defense, Admiral Gorshkov for ASW, and use ground based aviation + Lider's Zircon missiles as their strike capability. They can forget domestic LHD program and carrier in that case.
Click to expand...
They are already in the process of building two Project 23900 LHDs at Zaliv Shipyard.
SLCJCMu.png


I do not know why some people think Russia cannot afford carriers, when the UK has two. Russia just won't be building heavy carriers without having the escorts for them built. It is about as simple as that.

FairAndUnbiased said:
They also need to cut PAK-DA. It is nice to have but it is going to be a PowerPoint project forever. Focus on modernizing and making more Tu-160.
Click to expand...
They are currently building two PAK-DA prototypes. And they need some sort of Tu-22M3 or Tu-95 replacement. The Tu-160 is just too bleepin expensive.

FairAndUnbiased said:
And they should import either AWACs like KJ-200 or AWAC components since their A-50s are getting old and A-100 is under very slow production.
Click to expand...
A-50 is being upgraded to A-50U. Which is pretty modern in terms of electronics. I talked about this before. They got like seven A-50Us.
A-100 is still under development.

FairAndUnbiased said:
With Russian ~60 billion USD budget they have to pick and choose. Even PLA with 250 billion USD budget is not putting as much into ground forces as necessary to save up for the navy and air force. Russia should have a small (relatively) navy capable of defending bastions and projecting a force via missiles, and really putting its money into ground and air power.
Click to expand...
Well Russia's Navy is way behind the other services so it is much necessary for investments to be made. As is Russia is already losing more ships yearly than the ships they build. And yes Russia does need some kind of fleet otherwise they can't escort their merchant fleet.
 
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